Kingdom Shy. You have known man, You have born child, Yet shy. We touched once, almost, our stretched fingers feeling their way carefully inside a mesh of thorns and nettles inching slowly towards each other a breath an hour, a word a day... ouch!... You pricked your finger and pulled it hastily back gathering all of your limbs in your shell under a canopy of spikes and thistles and anemones and blossoming cherry trees and discarded down, the bleeding finger in your mouth writing stories about the kingdom of king Mighthavebeen. Time followed fashion and pulled back its hours, days, months... Hey there, fairy! I waited. Maybe the shell was empty, maybe you left. I knocked again, Hey there fairy, touch me? This time something stirred inside the opaque carapace and a thin feeler crawled out through a small fissure touching my face, then touching my ears, my eyes, finally touring several times around my mouth and inside it. It was only a thought, not a finger even. Hmm, feels like you, sounds like you... I heard the smacking sounds of your licking the end of the feeler. ...but it does not taste like you, does not smell like you. I stepped back, surprised, annoyed... no, not angry. How would you know? You never tasted, smelled me before. I did not like the pitch of my voice, suddenly shrill like an adolescent’s transiting into puberty. You laughed... thank God for a sense of humor. Wanna bet? I heard some bumps and thumps, then a few apples rolled out through a long crack which closed immediately. The odor was sharp, strange, a bit acrid. What’s this? I asked, a few old, rotten apples? They make the best of wine, you laughed back, and... there was nothing. Not even red shoes. Fairy!... I tried calling out. Just a few apples. Bitten by teeth, and worms, and words, and... Words? I looked closer, tiny lines rolling, dancing, chanting. I picked up the apples and stuffed them in my pockets, my fingers tingling with strange sensations as the bleeding bite marks started seeping into my body. * Was difficult carrying it in one hand and my suitcase in the other. Was even more difficult driving the car to the airport given that my car was a six positions manual stick-shift type. I got there though in one piece, starting, shifting gears, one emergency overtake and one cat safe, rolling down the manual window for the parking ticket... The toughest though was getting through passport control (easy), security (terrible), flight attendant (luckily she took pity on me), eating the rubber chicken only with a fork (my neighbor helped me), getting through customs (impossible). After deliberating with various officials for three hours calling a shrink to estimate my sanity and the local sanatoriums to ascertain none of their residents is missing and my embassy, ascertaining the same at my departure point, they let me in and even helped me to the cab stand. Some laughed. Some cried, I mean had tears in their eyes laughing. Some made signs with international meaning against their head. Did not matter, all was fine. I was finally on my way. You did not expect me. Hey there, fairy! You were uncombed, uncologned, unlipsticked... un... so many other un’s, brown slippers to your feet, a large run to your right stocking, your mouth taking its second bite into an apple, beautiful. You watched me with a curious look, my one hand carrying it, the other hand carrying the suitcase, wasn’t clear if your examination ended appreciatively or devastatingly... Yes?... you drooled the question out a piece of chewed apple jumping to my lower lip as you spoke ...oops... sorry... but before your finger reached out my tongue snatched the invader in, munching slowly, your embarrassed finger touching my lip. Hey there, fairy! I repeated, this time with no door panel between us and your head cocked to the left and your eyes squinted questioningly... Hmm, feels like you, sounds like you... Well, I always thought women could scream, till I heard you. Then I had to recalibrate my knowledge ten decibels higher. You screamed, dropping the apple and slamming the door in my face then opening it again... please, come in... and disappearing somewhere in the halls of female vanity somewhere... wherever, in the house. I pushed the door gently shut behind me, dropped the suitcase next to the door and sat down on the sofa, my back straight, my hand holding it right in front of me. Waiting. I did not move. I did not count time, time was irrelevant, I looked at the walls, the furniture, absorbed the unfamiliar smells, various sounds and unintelligible words penetrating from behind a closed door, a few bangs and yelps... took me so long to get here now I had all the time in the world. I think I waited for hours. Probably the same you emerged countless... maybe it was days?... later. Beautiful. As I was supposed to remember if I would have seen you before. As I imagined. Only this time there were black shiny shoes to your feet and golden threaded stockings ending somewhere unknown beyond the hem of the black dress which started a bit above your knee molding your forms like a lover’s glove into parts called hips and parts called waist and parts called breasts and finally shoulders acting as a white flesh clothes hanger hanging to the black cloth with two narrow black straps... did you choose the black to emphasize the white, I asked myself before letting my eyes settle on your face and dying there in ecstasy. You approached and sat next to me pulling modestly the dress towards your knees, the shine in your eyes inhuman... Is this for me?... you asked, pointing to it. It is for you, I tried to say, and failed, my hand holding it gone rigid by now, same as my facial muscles and my brain. May I take it? you asked further, approaching your hand and your body. That’s what I came here for, I failed saying again, afraid to open my fingers till you picked it gently from my hand and neared it to your face. And you want to tell me that you flew all the way from there to here holding an uncovered glass of wine full to the brim in your hand and you passed through passport control and security checks and flight attendants and an airplane dinner and customs officers still holding on to it and not spilling one drop? Yes, I failed saying a third time, and did not try again. You neared it to your nose, and I saw the fragrance ascending into your nostrils and clouding your eyes, then I could not see the clouds anymore as your eyelids descended and you took a long sip. Yes, it tastes like my apples... and before I could protest, you added, ...yes, it tastes like you, it smells like you. You sipped again, savoring, your tongue licking the glass’ rim. Am I your lover? you asked. You are my fairy, I finally found my cords and the sound of ripping cloth invaded my ears like hailstones as your wings uncurled on your back fluttering victoriously and the black dress fell to your feet and your white blinded me. Love me, you said, and I did not know if it was a question, or a request, or a command. I watched you turn the glass upside down and as the wine started pouring our cheeks touched, facing upwards the wine filling our mouths till there was no more mouth left, and no more wine. You caught the last drop on your closed lips and turned your face offering it to me. I decided to take the offer. The walls around us turned crystal, tiny cracks running through them in a nightmare of spiders carrying countless web threads spreading in all directions waiting for our mouths to touch... they touched... the wine mouthfuls blending to a toxic mixture of morning scented liqueur and as we started gulping the insides of each other’s mouth the crystal exploded in billions of stars settling into the endless canopy stretching above us, underneath us, on our skin, glinting. Where are we? I asked, catching my breath for a second. In the kingdom, you answered, burning my clothes with a touch of your wing and turning them to... wings? Love me, you repeated, and this time the command in your voice was unmistakable. * It was my first flight, ever, my first love making beneath the stars and so close to them. Your laughter twinkled as I tried my wings and missed one or two turns chasing you and bumping into a star’s corner or crashed into an angry goose which started chasing me around you clinging to my right foot’s big toe. But within one sunset I was as good as you, within two I was better, within three I was ready to make love. Let’s make love, I begged, panting. Here, among the stars? you asked. Here, among reflections of your teardrops, I answered and embraced you with arms, with wings, caring not for falling... we were so high... You lifted your arms above your head, ballerina style, and started gyrating around an imaginary axis spiked through your body, my left hand’s fingers tracing a four lined thread on your skin starting at your wrists, and as you gyrated higher and higher my trace advanced downwards on your arms leaving a trail of conquering goosebumps at every touch point... goosebumps, involuntarily I snatched a glance around for that bellicose goose... reaching your elbows, lower towards your armpits, the first goosebumps inside your armpits and a shrill giggle... hey, it’s tickling... but you did not stop your gyration, rising further till my little finger started fluctuating having reached the beginning of your breasts, then the other fingers joined the vacillation, stronger, the amplitude growing, hill, valley, hill, the little finger invading the sacred areolae realm, pebbles bursting to the surface underneath the invader's dare, one more rotation... the little finger touched... mounted the nipple I heard the gasp, saw the shudder, your teeth so white against an almost severed lower lip, your vertical movement reaching almost a halt when my ring finger reached the nipple one finger above and one beneath, left breast, right breast, left breast... pale scarlet invading your cheeks from the middle towards the edges your breath suddenly rugged, uneven, your gyration stopping for a moment allowing me to cup the nipple between my fingers and squeeze gently, I knew you wanted to scream the tendons of your neck stretching like a hunter’s bow yet you preferred to keep it for later as, suddenly, you resumed your ascent my fingers now underneath your breasts, your rotation faster, your ascent faster, the skin above my fingers the coarseness of rough sand the skin underneath my fingers the smoothness of newborn petals, the hips, the navel, the belly squirming, growling, my fingers approaching that moment of fulmination the meeting point of all of your body’s sensations the soft wetness... touch... penetration... exit... touch... penetration... exit... oh, you screamed, oh, you screamed inside my head, inside my body inside the universe as it tumbled into chaos thunderbolts racing between your shrieking wing tips when you invaded my flesh with your presence lacerating my shoulder muscles with your desperate hold your mouth welding its burning perimeter against mine our exploding lungs acting and breathing as one our bodies rushing for celestial recognition your insides roaring in titanic satisfaction as the tsunami shivering its way from my ankles up finally exploded its devastating fury into your flesh and we burned our comet between the raining stars... raging, raging... Close your eyes, you murmured, repairing the damage to my wings with the poison of chewed laurel leaves, then covering my body with fine, warm sand and lying above me humming sad, wordless lullabies. And after the fantasy is over? you asked after the second conflagration. The fantasy is never over, I answered after the third one. Why? you insisted. There was no more sand in the universe so you covered me with the diamond dust you gathered for three nights running and now starting to melt between us, gluing our chests’ skin. Because it is reality, I answered, knowing. And when you leave? I pulled your head up, not allowing you to breathe for long minutes. You did not mind, you breathed through your skin. You close your eyes and I am back. We slept for three nights and days. Then I left. * There was a letter attached to the box, I paid the postal dues and opened the letter. My Lover, Before you came I had kingdom, now I learned love. I have to choose, Your Lover. I opened the box. There were three apples inside, and a glass.

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Touches The traces of a bleeding lip upon the pillow’s crease, The lipstick smears inside my shirt, a lover’s sweet caprice, A scented letter on the desk beneath a poems book, The dripping towels painting gloom on bathroom’s lonesome hook. I wrote my rhyme with fingers’ tips beneath your bouncing breast Then sealed the script with blazing lips against your vague protest, And once your mouth its arrant lust unleashed upon my skin I crushed your wants and drowned your sighs in honey clothed sin. When dawn has drawn its timid glow upon your naked spine, I gleaned your sweat with laurel leaves and mixed it with my wine, Then wiped you dry with panting breath and whispered in your palm The secret ways of poems raw, my love’s emerging psalm. I knew, when day once more turns night and larks through meadows hide Inside my room, inside my bed, inside my arms you glide, And while you feed me apple peel and teach me of your tongue I weave inside your brittle wings all words of songs unsung.

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Want's Shroud my want with your want, the soft, the warmth, the gliding soppy texture shying in the depths of your embarrassed privation so delicate to the touch. Soak my want inside your want, the lotus turning sarracenia grinding muscles milking my body’s last moments of agony before that inevitable one moment of death. Sate my want through your want, when I alleviate my crave for salt licking your sweat and paradise is the time you let me share your womb’s luxuriant doors and their secret nepenthe.

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Worm Inside a narrow tube, Only one way to crawl, forward, Knowing of the tyranny of loneliness waiting at the outer side heel raised in wait for quashing a permanent curfew on my life. After the sun has set Before the moon has risen Under the darkness of starless skies clothed in the impenetrable morosity of clouds Eyes closed... where did it come from... the light? A thin wand touched my eyelashes, I did not have to open them to see fragile fingers coming my way touching first my brow then my elbow then sliding between my own outstretched fingers and offering me... togetherness. The wand turning apple, You took the first bite and I followed savoring the taste of your teeth carving symbols in my future. The tyranny vanquished by a lost fairy now cuddling inside my rekindled life.

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That One, Once Close your eyes, as you did so many times before knowing me. Close your eyes, knowing me. Do you remember the moments to come? Arms brushing, lips brushing, knees brushing... Hesitation, shyness, the strange unknown alluring, temptation shrieking in your eyes, questioning. The blush, real. Turning urge at tips of fingers finally clenching. Shirts unbuttoning, shoes dropping, cottons tearing... Palm to palm, toes touching naked lights naked bodies navels near impatiently crisp bed sheets crease to old faces till whispers turn sighs and bodies contort like wet towels. Muscles burning, skins stretching, lungs choking... Open your eyes till you close them after knowing me. Open your eyes not knowing me. You will remember the moments to pass.

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Mender “Hey, you missed one piece,” I said, handing you a crumb of glass I misplaced somehow. You did not complain, after all, mending hearts was your art. You took it in your mouth, rolling it around with your tongue, from time to time unlatching your lips to let an impish flare escape your furnace, then, when it was the thickness of honey you bent over my chest and let it drool out filling that cavity you were wondering about earlier on. Your décolletage was large, my pain immense, yet I could not refrain from admiring the roundness of your hanging breasts. “You are ogling my breasts,” you laughed, your tongue filing with small movements that last spot you repaired. “Are you sure you are in pain?” you asked further, knowing of my hell. “Yes, I am,” I answered, wincing as you started stitching my chest back. You were not very gentle. “Why did you hide that last piece?” you kept interrogating, knowing of my hell. “Because I wanted to die,” I did not lie. You knotted the wire several times around a rib, pushed the end up and nipped it with your teeth. For a moment your mouth was close to my chest the hot blast burning my hair and blistering my skin. “Ouch,” I did not complain. “For a grown up, you ‘do not’ a lot of things,” and you got up, ready to leave. “Please, stay,” I did not ask. I begged, the chameleon in your eyes playing its hues like a colors fountain in green, brown, blue, gold, silver... “You have funny eyes,” I commented unnecessarily, “what is their real color?” “What do you choose it to be?” “Can I choose?” “Yes.” “Can I choose you to stay?” You dropped your coat on the back of the chair... “...move a little...” you pushed me with your knee and I shifted my body on the bed, letting you stretch next to me. “I am a heart mender,” you said. “Is it a profession?” “It is an art.” “How many hearts do you mend at one time?” ”One.” “Mine?” “Yes.” You pulled out your breast and guided my mouth to a nipple. It was hot, yet bearable. I started gulping rivers of life. “Why did you want to leave?” I asked, my mouth spilling the simmering liquid all over your chest. “Because you did not ask me to stay,” you answered wiping my mouth with one finger. “I did.” “I stayed.” You scooted downwards till your eyes were level with mine and offered me your furnace. “For how long?” I asked. “For as long as it takes your heart to mend.” “It may take a long forever.” “Forevers are long per definition,” you smiled, still wiping. You were right, was I getting senile or drunk? “Both,” you laughed out loud and I smothered the laughter in an instant taking your mouth hostage in mine and drinking all that hell pouring from your body. Funny, it tasted like bleeding... tangerines.

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Discovery Like you’ve never been touched before. I was not. But you bore child, and you knew man And fingers round your ankles ran And in that endless stretch of life before the birth of us Two thousand suns ten times have died in ocean’s torpid pus And lust began. Did sand turned mud inside your hourglass? It did, I waited. The lust I see behind your eyes The rampant crave between your thighs I’ll pluck the sparrow in its flight and seed it in your soul Then sink my hand between the suns and steal a handful coal To light your sighs. I will teach you time, I will teach you love. Please, do. The skin against your beat of heart I’ll paint with mouth’s forgotten art And when your dress from shoulders falls to brush against my shoe The blushing scarlet paints your toes invading with its hue The miles apart. Like you’ve never been touched before. Like now... We’ll count the broken blades of grass And drops of dew to gold and brass And while I melt inside your skin ablaze with crawling death I hear the wail of wounded larks inside your singing breath And eons pass.

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The Poison Of Life In a field of fresh blood poppies I was an old snow butterfly, a warrior, fiercely protecting my realm against those savage intruders searching for the poison of life. I looked around, tired, scanning the horizon then halting for a moment, that irregular white stain there... could it be?... intruder!... I shrieked, curled my antennae into balls gathered my wings into arrowheads and attacked it like a mad gone sandfly landing for one moment on the lone surviving poppy mid of the white desert ready for the kill... the poppy sighed... ...and fragrances of my childhood’s forest embraced me with a caress of lilac, and jasmine, and blossoming apple tree orchards, and white lily fields, and wild red roses bushes... dizzy my antennae uncurling my wings fluttered once and I fainted falling into the humid darkness of that poppy’s heart. I woke up in the warm cradle of ten fingers, the giant’s face gazing down at me, I suddenly remembered the horror stories of my adolescence about the giants called humans and their fingers ending in pins and that poppy on their face called mouth. I cringed, ready to fight to death as the giant bent her head towards me... oh... those inebriating fragrances breezing out of her mouth... and while her little finger was touching the nearest poppy petal her lips... touched my wings. I gasped, seeing the boiling red absorb into her finger flow into her shoulder, neck, mouth, and then through her breeze soak into my wings... the poison of life... a kiss? I streaked into the clouds the blood red of my wings forcing the sun to blink then zoomed back down blazing a trail through that endless field of white poppies. So the legend was true, I thought, drunken with the knowledge as I chased the woman giant clinging to her hair and dying there.

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Chocolate The chocolate melts slowly in my mouth I look at it carefully... it’s your finger. Where have you been lover, just a few moments ago? you ask. I try another finger, it starts melting too, at this rate there will soon not be much left of you just a lump of chocolate melting in my mouth. Do you know that mouth rhymes with south? you ask, offering me a third finger. And with drouth. Drouth is so archaic. Drouth is so beautiful. Drouth cannot be beautiful. It can, when it is strewn with you-flavored chocolate sticks. You look a moment downwards, I guess towards my naked belly, then explode with laughter. What is so funny? I pout angrily, not angry enough to forgo a fourth finger. If you don’t know it by now you never will, and you wiggle tighter into me. Women have a logic of their own, I know, so I do not pursue this line of questioning. Care to go for my nipples? you whisper in my ear. Nipples? You mean those pinky lumps at the end of your apples? Yes, them. Do they also taste like chocolate? I don’t know, but they melt. You tell me what they taste like. Women have a logic of their own, I told you already. It was worth a try, after all, what was I risking? Hey, lover, wake up. I refuse to leave the land, cherries hanging just at the level of my mouth, and peeled pineapples... hey, that is a miracle... and grapes the size of apples and apples the size of breasts... I open my eyes, still suckling, my eyes heavy with sleep. You run a finger upwards on my cheek, it feels like a new toothbrush... You should get a shave, you are prickly. I shaved one hour ago. You slept for three days. I am almost tempted to jump up in indignation and call you a liar... oh, no, I think, you are trying to trick me, I will not give up my prey so easily... and I clamp harder on the nipple. Lover, I have to pee... hard... Mmm... I moan. I didn’t pee for three days... Mmm... I moan, trying to say liar. Of course, if you want to make love first... Mmm... I moan, not trying to say anything just keeping my prize in my mouth and rolling with you endlessly on the crushed lawns of Eden. I give up reluctantly, licking my lips and looking at it greedily. See, you wail, it is all red and raw and swollen and hurting. I kiss it. See, you smile, it doesn’t hurt anymore, and you sprint to the bathroom. I hear the sigh of relief as the sound of the stream leaving your body hits the water. So, you cry above the noise, does it taste like chocolate? I have no answer for you, how could I tell you about trees growing peeled pineapples? Ridiculous. I leave the house still wondering about that laughter, what in blazes could be so funny about a melting chocolate stick? Then I open the note you squeezed into my hand before leaving. You might be a great lover, lover, but in your heart you are as innocent as a newborn. Now, that is an insult! I kiss your signed name, fold it carefully and stick it in my pocket. I smile all the way into life.

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Another Definition this ration of passion when I sink my fingers inside your ribcage looking for the heart and you squirm, knowing of lust flowing in, this mire of desire when your lungs capture my fingers avoiding the wasted effort of having to look for them all the way into your mouth, this chasm of spasm when the milk flowing in our bodies finds its dying nest in the other’s moment of oblivion.

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Negating Entropy Don’t dip the end of my pen in your passion for the while of your residing in my universe. Or my spit word will turn glowing marble rolling up your mountain into a swelling ball of fire sucking you in like a butterfly engorged by the sun.

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Sensations My fingers, linger upon your naked form immodestly tracing places otherwise modestly forbidden. You pull the bed sheet to your chin, not to prevent me from touching but to capture against your skin all the sensations flowing out of your body.

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Essence The essence of love is lovers. Sweat, saliva, the broken steam of ruptured breath and the sticky mire of exploding lust. Crush it all in a bottle with desires of you and don’t bury me in the North Pole or the only continent left over will be the tip of the Everest.

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Black Beauty I saw her approaching as black as the night as beautiful as a painting still hiding inside the tip of the brush then swiftly passing by leaving behind a trail of perfumed molecules tinting the air around me with evaporating shadows. I was lost in visions of starry nights and black pastels... “...hi,” I heard a voice and I raised my head to a face not as beautiful to a perfume not as penetrating “...hi,” I answered and then you smiled. It was all you had to do to blur the world and turn off the lights and cut open my heart. “Your heart, it is cut open,” you said laying your palm on my chest and your lips inside my mouth. We rushed out of the airport, black beauty no more than just another hurrying passenger receding with the throng behind, the hand holding mine now my whole universe.

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Tongue Your tongue my sacred possession, whipping into my skin the ruts of your passion, singing my ears with tuneless desires as it digs between my teeth for lost crumbs of sanity. You grind pieces of apple and tangerine and grape seed until the syrupy mush ferments into sparkle and your mouth turns decanter when you lean over me and your tongue drips thick ambrosia pearls straight down my throat.

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Apple Wine I did not know about the fire. I knew about the beauty the light like passing through landscapes breathless then carrying remote memories inaccessible. But I did not know about the fire. * I entered the room, the tapestry on the walls talking to me with an air of familiarity, I neared my eyes to read... my words, copied with neat feminine calligraphy rows and rows and rows and oceans, how many miles did the tip of your pen travel copying my poems to your life? “How many miles did the tip of your pen travel copying my poems to your life?” Of course you did not answer, you did not know. “Many more than the miles which brought you to my house.” You locked the door, turned around and handed me the key. “Just in case the fire is too much for you...” was there a smile, a grin, a condescending tone as you pushed me away from you, gently, and sat on a chair? “Undress, please.” I have seen the world, I have met women, I was a grown up. The blood suddenly surged into my face drowning my eyes, I choked, the moment of my re-discovered timidity unbearable, was there innocence in my barely audible “Why?” “Because I want to discover you.” I looked at the walls surrounding us, so much of me... all of me there. “You have discovered me already,” I think I said. “Yes, your mind. Today I hunger for your body. Please?...” There was no command there, just desire, raw, primeval, beautiful, as pure as the first Hydrogen atom... funny metaphor... the thought flashed through my mind as I started opening my shirt, tiny flashes of lightning crossing sporadically the gap between your lips, the distance between the ends of your fingers, the thin hairs of your eyelashes, the sharp odor of ozone reaching my nostrils almost knocking me down. I fingered the key dropped in my pocket, snapped it, and dropped the shirt to the floor. I wanted to know the fire. I watched you, waiting. You moved your index finger to the top button of your blouse, exploding it, the next down, another explosion, when all were done you shook your shoulders and the blouse floated next to mine, my eyes riveted to the transparent white of your brassiere... with a sharp move I removed my singlet the hair on my chest sparking with static. You stood up and neared me, guided my finger to the strap hugging your shoulder and it melted at my touch the blob of incandescent matter rolling down and searing my finger and as I pulled my hand back in agony I watched it cutting a wide slice in the lace uncovering a burning nipple then rolling on till all you had to do was shake your shoulders again and your lace landed on top of the discarded clothes pile. Was I going to die? I did not care, maybe I wished to. I kicked my shoes away, then tore out of the rest of my clothing watching you do the same and with a savage lupine snarl we attacked each other’s mouth going for the hidden sun... finding it, the fire. We rolled on the walls, the tapestry’s ink boiling away at our touch branding its poems beneath our skin, infusing itself into our blood, scorching the inner walls of our veins and strangling our hearts. fire, fire, fire, fire, oh, the growl of crude desire binding knots in raging rivers while atop Olympus shivers godfolk’s ire. raving, raving, raving, raving, mighty oaks to slivers shaving when horizon’s wheel is turning in its ageless forests burning our craving. quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, whipping flares of sunset striate in the flesh wide welts of passion and when rage has gulped its ration dies the riot. I found you on the bed, lying on your back, dirty with the mud of lovemaking, a frayed silken band covering your eyes the rest of you naked, so majestic the view. I neared my face to your thighs, the tip of my tongue desecrating the sanctity of your wet insides then gliding further up, never losing contact, till the smothering dark warmth of shadowed temptation changed to the blinding whiteness of your belly’s borderless desert. “You taste like cider,” I ventured, licking my lips in the ecstasy of after. “It is because of the apples,” you answered, plucking an apple from your hair and biting into it. “Do you want to taste my wine as well?” you continued, munching. “Didn’t I already?” I wondered aloud. “You tasted my fire, your palate in blisters, your tongue in shreds. I offer you my balsam now.” You took another bite, chewing noisily, sticky rivers descending the corners of your mouth in appetizing affront. “Your rosé?” I asked. “My blushful pink,” you answered, dragging my head to your chest and forcing a hard nipple into my mouth letting alcoholic mists invade my clarity of reason and insistence of will. “Your red?” I asked. “My burgundy dark,” you answered, dragging my mouth to your lips and forcing me to lick the drooling liquor descending to your chin sinking the anchors of inebriation’s mirage all inside my body. “Your white?” I asked. “My pale honey,” you answered, letting the ribbon part with your eyes and waiting for me to see. I almost bolted away scared, benumbed with the sight of that bountiful apples orchard garnering the corners of your eyes and dripping relentlessly into the linen underneath. “Your tears...” I finally found my voice at the bottom of my throat, “...your tears they are... apple shaped...” I gasped. “My tears, they are the apples of white wine,” you smiled happily rolling me on my back with you on top of me, the overflowing caverns of your eyes now flowing freely into my mouth. I gulped, and gulped, and gulped... “Is this the garden of eden?” I asked. “This is the anteroom of hell,” you answered. “Hell is bad,” I objected. “Hell is what you make it to be. You tasted it just now, was it bad?” you answered. “Are you an angel?” I asked. “I am a lover,” you answered. “Are you human?” “I am woman.” “I want to make love, again...” I begged, remembering earlier acquired visions of suns and comets and streaking galaxies. I don’t remember waking up, I guess I didn’t want to. * Finally I learned about fire. My only wish now is to burn.

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Shop Wild two kids in a cookies shop my body readying itself for your reaching fingers and insatiable appetite your body readying itself for mine in a world blessed with the absence of adults kids, sharing the sweetness of life. “I refuse to grow old”, I declared allowing you to count my wrinkles and my grey hairs and my winters left, my lips sticky with the cotton candy of your breast. “How young are you?” you asked knowing of the futility of contradiction, opening the curls of your honey jar and offering it to me. I licked it clean and smacked my lips appreciatively, “Younger than my thirst and my need and my autumn colors.” “A suckling?” you winked allowing me the benefit of doubt and answer. “Eternally hungry,” I agreed voraciously attacking every sugary lump decorating your body. “Careful, you may get holes in your teeth,” you laughed ticklishly. “Who needs teeth when one has two tongues...” I answered philosophically. “Two?...” “Yes, one is mine...” You laughed again, this time in appreciation, and it was your turn to bite off chunks of my sugar sucking it in noisily, then biting again, and again, your tongue dripping pools of that softening poison recycling pieces of my body through the fathoms of pleasure. “Careful, you may get holes in your teeth,” I teased back. “Who needs teeth in hell?” you answered philosophically. “Hell?” “Yes, our shared...” And the smell of burning sugar invaded our universe as the flames consuming our skin drank in greedily beads of sweat and creaking bone joints and that syrup forever flowing between our mouths.

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Onion peeling off your timidity, the red layer, invisible, impenetrable... till you allowed me. then your shyness, the finest of steels, the powerful white of innocence giving in to... my promise of passion. I peeled your clothes, a variegated display of blues and greens and scarlets and yellows and with the last snapping button... you opened your lips. all which was left was your skin. pink. I dared not peel your skin, knowing of the lambent desires of flesh, scared to die an atrocious death of fire. you took my fingernail and forced that long cut above your breast allowing me to see your need. I accepted the fatality of inevitability and as flames leaped the inexistent distance between our mouths the pain started receding into beauty. all which was left was blindness. gazing open eyed into the sun. your heart opened like the inner sanctum of a flower telling me of layers still to be discovered, uncovered. an unknown you emerged from the lake of hidden dreams. I fell into your soft insides knowing of the finality of my dare. the layers started closing pitilessly around me. thankful, I started sobbing my ecstasy.

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Promise I trace your feet indents in the sand, your small imprint hugged inside mine and sea water seeps between the two binding them with its promise of salt. You halt a few steps away, pensive, then drop a few broken shells behind you watching my skin split around ridges as it follows unwaveringly the promise of blood. We stop, you kneel licking my wounded soles salt and blood and sand grinding between your teeth then honor me with that unique reaving kiss telling of the inevitability of a promise of love.

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World's End I was willing to go to the world’s end to meet the woman hiding inside you. I did not know you were willing to find the world’s end in order to keep away from it. I found you waiting across the street your robe’s hem laden with summer’s petals asking me if I preferred you here or at the world’s end. I refused to answer the answer you knew knowing it to be wherever you lay down those petals and we make love.

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Count started counting your toes, I stopped when I reached one hundred and seventy out of breath. why did you stop? you complained wiggling your big toe, demanding. may I move on to your nipples? I asked, shyly. I thought you’ll never ask, you answered, blushing. I kissed the left one first, then the right one, then the left again... I did not tire at one hundred and seventy and actually stopped counting soon after. I guess I will never tire. * look at them, swollen, you complained three days later and as I wanted to pull away to point at my swollen lips you dragged my head back down completely uninterested in my pain and begged please, don’t stop now...

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Trek my open palm heavy on your navel hesitating which way to wander up the hills or down the swamps or roll you over like a boulder and trek long that unexplored canyon starting at the bottom of your spine and ending at the top of your thighs... you take my index finger into your mouth followed by the rest of my fingers, tasting, then hang your weight on the nape of my neck pulling my ear down to tell into it why not everywhere? I scare... everywhere? and risk being pierced by those archers roaming your forests with their long knives and saber teeth and fearsome howls? you take my index finger into your mouth again and I know there are fates worse than those archers and I sink into you to die. which side of heaven is this? I ask waking up next to a smile. the side worth dying for, you answer guiding my palm again up the hills and down the swamps and long that unexplored canyon.

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Petals Roll the petals around your fingers, yes... all of them, no... doesn’t matter the flower if wild, if red, if fragrant. Roll them carefully, not to break or crease or tear... my toes too? your toes too. and now? now raise your palms up to the light stretch your toes and open your eyes wide... red fireflies? and green? and blue? and... A river of buzzing beasts sprung forward from between the rolled petals covering your eyes in glitter then your skin then the fields, the oceans, the skies... what is this? yet you never once lowered your palms and blinked close your eyes the wonder freezing your moment of ecstasy the color undefined the beauty... the beauty?... the beauty pouring from the warmth of you and the petals? an illusion to make you believe in your beauty. you never once lowered your palms and blinked close your eyes savoring the reality beyond the illusion.

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Fantasies... Really? She stopped a shirt’s thickness away her cheeks a cherries orchard her lips a poem unrhymed her breath a dolphin’s love whistle... My heavy suitcases thumped to the floor crushing her toes... she did not feel... she simply gazed into me and refused to blink. Not even once. I sunk my hands desperately into my pockets rummaging through the mess for a present worthy of the occasion where the hell could I find it, could I find it? I pulled them out and two swallows took off chasing each other under the airport’s tall roof chirping and pooping all over the shiny marble floor, no, I could do better than that, next it was two frogs that jumped down turning into naked princes, well, one was a princess, then they ran away trying to catch the next available flight to their kingdom, no, I was not looking for princes or princesses and no better luck next time I tried to pull a present out my hands coming out dripping thick honey vainly trying to rub it off against my trousers... What are you looking for? she finally asked, her lips smiling, her eyes smiling, her hairs smiling as they fluttered and coiled and waved like a forest of Medusa snakes yet I did not turn to stone, not the way my heart was beating. I am trying to find those days you did not know me and crush them underneath my foot, I blabbered, blushing tomato red. She raised her hands to her sides, the transparent veils hanging from her arms down to the floor pulsating with blue veins and white snowflakes, then she gathered me in, body, clothes, suitcases and all, and we floated out of the terminal. Nobody seemed to think it weird, passengers rushing around us, through us, What kind of a miracle is this? I asked her, filling my lungs with the smell of her skin and her sweat. You wanted to give me an impossible present, I am giving you an impossible love, she answered, opening the door into the tree and closing it behind us, burying me into her flesh. How can I describe a love which even a poet cannot?

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Meeting I let my small finger touch the side of your neck then slide down between your breasts before placing the flat of my hand on your chest bone waiting. Lianas circled my fingers sinking hollow thorns inside my blood stream to bind the breath of our awaking deserts into a Stygian promise. I tore my hand away knowing that sand may forever flow my veins if I stop feeding your hungry dunes my exsiccating boulders of sun. Flowers as beautiful can grow only beneath desert’s scorched countenance. I fed you sun drops and fire flowers blossomed covering the insides of your chest and the flesh of your breasts sang the hymns calling upon the sailors of my mouth to die on their shores.

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Laced lace your toes with my toes your fingers with my fingers raise your face and lace your lips, your eyes, your eyelashes with mine. my ribs? your ribs, breasts, loins, thighs, and knees... my words? words? I love you too... after... spent the rest of the night unlacing veins and bones and skin strips and tangled flesh and knotted muscles and jammed tendons our two bodies feeling like several armies of twigs broken to splinters and thrown together in a snarl of limbs and joints and contumacious grapples. took some dressing and make-up and powdering to hide all the blue and black and red stains. hard, so hard doing it all with lips still laced.

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Bite Bite my fist as it presses against your mouth Don’t let your sound with strangers Just sink it to my bone and I will listen to it in my sleep As my joints creak and my fingers search in vain for your teeth.

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Siamese Come closer to me, much closer till the distance between our lips is only an outer layer of epidermis, one layer only, shared by both of us the Siamese glue sewing our mouths all around. Now breathe into me and let me exhale back into you as I breathe into you and you exhale back into me... how long can we repeat it before asphyxiating while still clinging tenuously to that single layer of epidermis making our flesh one? Hey, you are cheating... let go of... you want me to gasp and break the bond then I will take hold of... true, now you have to gasp so let’s change innocent gasps to ribald screams mouths riveted bodies invaded the glue spilling over ligating the broiled expanse of skin which, for moments few, remembers only the mordant smell of lovemaking. We are still alive... you complain wondering breathing heavily in and out of me, the one layer of epidermis still intact. Of course, I answer knowing Lovers live on... wine. Your argument melting inside another mouthful of liqueur you harvest in my mouth.

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Nail Polish I’ll paint your big toenail pink. Both of them. Pink, like the shell’s canopy guarding the infant pearl, Like your dreams, when you touch me, Like the moment of abandon once your carnal desires open your body and you swim in that liqueur of lust you never knew. I’ll paint your small toenail red. Both of them. The red of the match head lighting the fire underneath the pot brimming with the ash of petals turning into the incense liberating the last hesitating passages of your mind. I won’t paint any of your other toenails. And my fingernails? Neither. Why? To remind me of the innocence of you Before knowing me.

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Bed my body your mattress my belly your pillow. as you toss and turn and wrestle with the intoxicating smells of your bedding and your nightgown pulls up beyond your waist line while your small fists wrinkle my skin as your lips search for that lust scented elixir...

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Measurements the white crumpled bed sheet over our heads invincible protecting our vulnerable bodies from thieves and murderers and high way robbers... high way robbers in our bed?... even your eternal credulity was stretched one mile too far by my runaway mouth and I was about to lose the other high way, the one into Eden, as you raised your head from that latest feat of womanly torture your index finger just probing the depth of my navel and finding it too shallow. previous to that you examined the thickness of my tongue using your mouth as an uncalibrated yet mostly accurate gauge or so I maintained supporting chivalrously your efforts, then the height of my nipples working hard at catching one between thumb and middle finger as it kept slipping away when you tried to pull even though it was hard enough to crack a nut on, now you were busy torturing my navel the last intermediate station before... and then I had to open my big mouth. I waited to see if your finger will go for another depth test but as it poised over, unmoving, mid way between highest and lowest I knew I had to do something drastic or that night’s sex was gone to hell. they have stolen the depth... I tried desperately. yeah, when? you asked incredulously. when the sheet was not over our heads, that’s why I dragged it there. you smirked letting your finger descend again and push hard against my flesh several times then, seemingly satisfied, pulled it away and your hand started its blessed final descent. ouf, that was close, I felt like sighing in relief yet too afraid to utter a sound and break your concentration as you cupped your fingers for a final measure. I couldn’t care less for the sound of approaching hooves now turning thunder as a dozen galloping horses passed above our heads the white sheet never giving in to probing swords just as my body was entering its last metamorphosis phase from original jelly into temporary rigidity and then back into final jelly. I thought you were making fun of me, you moaned into my unshaven face refusing to part with that part of my body you just grafted in. never in the face of danger, I answered allowing you to decipher it any way you wished while busily recollecting that descent into hell which ended up in Eden. yeap, the immeasurable magic of love...

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Dionysos You dipped your lips in the glass of wine, did not drink just dipped. Then you raised your face to me letting the excess trickle down your chin and stain your white blouse. I found it hard to swallow my own sip. “You should better remove your blouse,” I partly choked partly croaked. “Why don’t you help me with it, my hands are busy right now?” you answered one hand pulling open my belt and sliding in the other grabbing the nape of my neck and forcing my mouth against yours. I licked your chin clean before allowing my tongue penetrate your chapel a muscled snake coiling and uncoiling around it as the ivory trap tried to bite pieces of my flesh. “The wine, it tastes differently in your mouth than in my glass,” I wondered. “Of course,” you admitted, “I spice it with my bitter years of wait.” You opened the doors to your secret cellar granting me any bottle I desired, watching me play God as I turned every sip back into sun sated grapes feeding these straight into your mouth.

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To To write my songs inside your lips With famished teeth and frantic snips Then watch the crimson tiny spurts Till passion’s crave your chest deserts. Your wish of lust to dress in silk Your arms to soak in soothing milk And while your flesh invades my mouth To sink a sun down wailing south. Inside your eye to drop a star Beneath your breast to carve a scar Upon a bed of midnight dew To hear the sigh... I love you too.

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At Why did you fall in love with me? Innocence. Innocence? At my age? At my knowledge of fright and war? At my knowledge of death of love and death of child and death of freedom? Yes, innocence. At your blush of mind and your dare of want and your love of leaf and your color of word. Innocence... does it hurt? No, only when you lose it. Will I lose it? Flashes pass through my mind, seeing the war, the death, the blush... No, you cannot ever lose it. Others live life. You live innocence.

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Immortal I opened the row of pearly buttons, pulled your right hand out of the sleeve half of the cotton shirt falling off uncovering one cream hued shoulder, pulled down the narrow strap and the silk cup attached to it uncovering a small breast untouched yet by sun. Uncover all of me, you pleaded. I could not, transfixed by that one and single moment of eternity wishing I was Leonardo to rend this beauty immortal.

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The Moment Before My palms, gliding upwards along your legs from toes up, my thumbs on the inside encountering from time to time the bristle of imperfectly shaved hairs scratching my skin. You lift your skirt and drop it in the back of my head accepting me inside the twilight as you advance slightly and my face goes to sleep on the softness of white cotton sodden with your humidity and feeding me the primitive pleasure of the moment before.

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Adjectives I find myself deep in thought, a tip of pen in my mouth oozes bitter tasting blue stains I do not even pay attention, are you beautiful? I look at the long list of adjectives I listed on the paper in front of me those I learned in previous lessons, all of them ending with an exclamation mark – soft! warm! curious! cheeky! daring! shy! passionate!... the list long, two full sides of an A4 sheet filled with small writing yet I never wrote there beautiful. How can I know? I read the list again, stopping at each exclamation mark, smiling, pondering, remembering, finally deciding. I know so much, I don’t need knowledge to know for sure, I take the pen out of my mouth carefully wipe the gelatinous excess of ink on the front of my shirt and add to the list... beautiful!

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Connected she got into the train, I saw her enter a compartment the window covered with a thick curtain of condensing vapors mindlessly memorizing the passage of an earlier generation of passengers now dispersing off the quay to their insignificant life and death assignments, or save the world meetings, or dynasty shattering loves, so insignificant compared to her parting. she sat close to the window, looking straight ahead at the empty chair facing her. I laid my fingers against the fuzzy shape marking her face as the train started pulling out, her head turned around and the stain of her lips pushed into the glass against the ends of my fingers and as the train slothfully accelerated my fingers started sliding back her mouth sliding with them connected leaving a dripping wide trace inside the condensation till my fingers moved from glass to wood from wood to iron trying to halt the train grabbing one last desperate time a brass handhold flying by, metal splinters filling my flesh with a promise to never forget.

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Conceived I don’t wish to be born again, go through primary school first love military death... what for? I don’t wish to go back in time to all those starting points I tried so many times so many of them so many ending points too and pain. This is my starting point there was none before I am being conceived now sleeping innocent and naïve in the chrysalid shell of a love still unknowing of the colors of its wings and mine. Will it be blue, red, gold? Will it sing? Can a butterfly sing? I think this one... can.

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Woman, woman, inside your clenched fist i conceal my dream at the end of your eyelash i hang my smile between your teeth i lay my poetry fingers please, do not shake your mane and explode in laughter to lose my dream and my smile and my poetry fingers in derision. this is my life and i have none other if you wish the stain of dreams to paint your fingertips morning and the shiver of smile to curl your eyelashes sunwards and poetry crumbs to explode between your teeth lost elysian music please, attemper the iniquitous beast devouring my insides with the sharp edge of rent dreams and smiles and poetry in abuse. all you are to do is smile your poetry into my dream and morning and sun and elysian music yours are.

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That One Word I saw the red between the lines, the red of lipstick, of lips, the romantic wantonness cutting slices of sky and throwing them my way, a thick finger dipped in the paint of your awakening heart tagging messages upon the impenetrable walls of my brain’s fortress and screaming for attention. I saw, I looked the other way. The walls crumbled, and the messages washed away uncared for and the only flowers left the blue of the wild hyssop pushing in between the mud ridden cracks. You pulled my carcass from underneath the rubble and fed me your warmth, and your breast, and the red insides of your mouth... live!... you said... and I gasped, I breathed, I blinked, I got to my knees. Your hand waited, sliding around my chest and with teeth biting into lips your knees started unbending dragging mine next to yours, I wobbled... here, lean on me lover... you said and nothing at that moment could have sounded more emboldening than that one word, lover...

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Moment, Intimate don’t dress... don’t, no, not even your underwear. if you insist just keep your straps to your shoulders and the elastic band to your waist and the lashes to your eyes and nothing else. I will guide you to the chill of linen and lay you down the middle of it decorating the blinding white into the floriated ivory of your skin then after peeling the straps off your shoulders and the elastic band off your waist I will tie your limbs to the shiny brass of the bed’s posts and make love to your precatory self permeated by those most melodious of sighs.

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Little Red Riding Hood Why are your big round eyes sparking like a sea filled with exploding fireworks, lover? In order to blind you into seeing beyond my imperfections and accept my warmth as your eternal requital, she answered. And why does your voice so melodiously sound with dozens of sirens taking turns at breathing through Pan’s long lost flute, lover? In order to beguile your curly head into crashing against the white cliffs of my chest and never breathe the air of freedom again, she answered. But I am not curly, I objected. Neither are my breasts rock hard, she answered. Oh, I pondered for a moment, trying to find traces of mockery in her words and finding none. And why are your teeth saber sharp those ivory rows dangerously poised against my flesh nibbling pieces off my ears and leaving thin scarlet traces all over my ribcage, lover? In order to enrapture your ravaged senses till they allow me cut a deep trench between your ribs and after I pull out that thick chain tying your heart to a memory bite right through it, she answered. And how will you dispose of it? my dullard self asked. I will melt it to dust with the potion dripping from my lips, she answered. Will I melt too? I insisted, frightened. Yes, you will, she admitted. She blinded me, she beguiled me, she enraptured me, and after I melted to the thick of honey she rolled herself inside my amorphous flesh and allowed me to make love to her most hidden secrets. So the story does not end as sadly as they say, she remarked, more to herself. No, it does not end, I answered cryptically. And how can we make it end? she asked further, you are the writer. Only you can make it end. How? By ending the final sentence with an exclamation mark. I thought she will take days to do it. She didn’t take even seconds. I love you!

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Signing Session I let you write your name on the back of my hand, your ink violet, your writing small and neat, then you repeated the same on my palm. I pulled up my sleeve offering you my bicep as well, flexing it, trying to impress you while you wrote your name and drew a flower, just underneath it. There was nothing impressive about my ankle, luckily I changed socks this morning as I had to pull one off and you dipped the pen in your mouth... why did you have to dip the pen in the mouth? ...and wrote your name several times chaining your letters to a snakelike bracelet mounting from my ankle till under my knee. You don’t go higher? I asked. For that you’ll have to pull down your trousers. I see nothing wrong with that, I answered. I do. Next I offered you my index finger, the inside of my shirt’s breast pocket, you blushed when I pulled out my shirt and offered you the pale spot underneath my navel. But you did not refuse, wrote a long dedication dragging downwards almost endlessly yet not endlessly enough, then kissed it. You kissed it, I couldn’t even see it, frustrated in my curiosity. What did you write there? I finally asked. A love poem. So why did you stop? There was no more place. There is plenty of space, I protested. Naughty, naughty, you laughed, putting every piece of clothing back in place pulling my belt firmly tight and capping your pen. I was disappointed. Is the session over? I asked. You went to the mirror, picked the lipstick from your purse and smeared a thick layer on your lips. The session just begins, you said, kissing the back of my hand and covering with oily red every spot of ink. Then you kissed my palm. I had to take off my shoe again and my sock again as you started coloring that snake wiggling its way up from my ankle. A red snake? I wondered aloud. Soon I stopped wondering at all when I found out there was more place on my body that could be covered with signatures than you previously indicated. In my indignation I wanted to call you a cheat and a liar but then I found I couldn’t speak at all. I guess my indignation will have to wait until it sounds more coherent than a sequence of moans.

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Stars I started chiseling pieces of stars to pave a road to you. Poor stars, you lamented, from the kingdom of gods to the toil of boots. Lucky stars, I answered, from the kingdom of night to the touch of your bare toes, and I lay down next to them.

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Stars, Two What are stars? you asked. Glorious clothes hangers to gods’ underwear, I answered. This sounds blasphemous, you complained. To the gods? To the stars. OK, I conceded, let’s try again. Stars are the fireflies of the universe, the grace in a swan’s majestic beauty, the passion squeezing earth’s entrails into a huge ball of fire. I like this better. I know. You snuggled into me, you were still unsatisfied. What is the difference? Difference? Between your first definition and the second. I pushed you gently away covering you up to the neck... Why did you do that? So that I can concentrate. Now you can? Can what? Concentrate. It was obvious I could not, I knew the answer yet I wanted to say it in the most untrite way. I said it. The first     are in the skies, The second     in your eyes. You giggled. This is the most trite thing a guy could say to a girl. I know. And the most beautiful. I know. We knew. The giggle turned to a smile as the white sheet deserted your skin in one fluid movement. Love works in mysterious ways.

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Sandwich Cut two slices of freshly baked rye bread layer them generously with yellow butter then place on top a thick slice of goat cheese with a few slices of tomato, cucumber, some olive oil, salt, make it all into one sandwich and take a huge, ravenous bite remembering the two weeks you were stuck on that lost island with the only edible thing around one single coconut tree and no coconuts. Now imagine my first bite into your lips.

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Sarracenia Purpurea I touched you with no more than a regard, maybe you heard my breath too? What did I do more? When suddenly the stem turned bone dressing flesh the grey turned red and blue and rainbow and the quiet said I love you. You opened your coat and your shirt and your skin the petals huge my hunger immense and I stepped into your heart enveloped inside the folding skin and folding shirt and folding coat to melt against your curving spine. Inside you were a world unknown. Why did you open to me? I asked. Are you going to devour me? I asked. You showed me your colored marbles collection, your dry scars and fresh cuts and the ladder you started building reaching for the sun and never getting there. Can you build a ladder to the sun? you asked. No, but I can get the sun down to you, I answered, and you let me go. I refused to leave, my hands busy tying cord ends and smooth branches and kite tails into the ladder. You said the sun will come down to me, you said. It will still need a ladder to do that, I answered, weaving the ingredients in. You are a strange man, you said. You are a strange flower, I answered. Because I don’t devour you? you asked. Because you love me, I answered adding another rung to the ladder. You stayed bone dressing flesh and red and blue and rainbow and you said I love you.

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Epilogue I let you write the introduction to my life’s story. Will you be there to write the epilogue? Your life started long ago I am now writing the middle of the middle chapter. Do you believe in reincarnation? No. Do you believe in resurrection? No. Do you believe in rebirth? No. Do you believe in love? Yes. I lived, I never died, therefore this was not life. A life exists only if it ends. Will you be there to write the epilogue? And if I answered ‘No’? No? To the question ‘Do you believe in love?’. You could not because then I would not have existed and this poem would not have been written and I would not have asked the question to which you would have answered ‘No’. Sounds complex to me. Yet accurate. Will you be there to write the epilogue? And then this will be writing the introduction to your life? Correct. Rebirth? Birth. She went to the last page, scribbled on the top of it ‘Epilogue’ then returned to the page she was just writing scribbling on. Now you know. You tricked me. No. I love you.

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Beauty When the moment of blinding glare is over, And I call in my horses back from the stampede frothing, fretting, foaming, some lost forever and guide them back to their enclosure promising to groom and feed them the coming sunset, And the sun falls back into its hole in the sky, and the river crawls back to its bed as my wasted shape crawls down from your sweaty and smelly body, And I regard with the eyes of dispassion the distended skin of giving birth, and the nipples sunk into flattened breasts, the bluish veins and the wrinkles and the obstinate hair spots staining your body as age hangs on like a leech feeding on your flesh and feeding it back its waste, the peeling varnish of a broken nail the knotted hair my nostrils assailed by acrid smells of before the amenities of civilized soap and water and perfumes mask your reality, And suddenly I gag and gasp and catch myself having forgotten to breathe for one full minute and suck the air noisily in thinking to myself oh, my God, so beautiful, Is when I know that I love you.

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Beauty, Two When you yawn in front of me and do not cover your mouth, When you blow your nose noisily and give me the hanky to dispose of, When you gulp a mouthful of beer and cannot control the following burp and you look at me askance not to apologize but to tell me that the beer is good and that you just remembered you forgot to tell me you love me, When you take my hand and kiss my life line then offer me yours and refuse to pull it away from my mouth, When you stand up and the chair longs for you and the fork bends in sorrow and the male guests look at me rather than you cursing me in their mind with envy, When you are beautiful. All the time.

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House I started climbing up the falling raindrops, fast, trying to reach higher before lower my feet a blur of movement and muscle and sweat washing down with the drops I missed, gaining over the treetops over the high flying swallows, sometimes stepping into the void then hanging on to a falling string of transparent pearls and catching my step again, I reached the cloud and pierced it with my finger reached the blue and pierced it with my finger reached the window and before piercing it your hand reached down and pulled me to your side closing the window to the world. How did you know where to find me? I couldn’t answer right away, had to catch my breath, to gulp some wine, took some time... I followed the raindrops. Nobody can follow the raindrops... I just proved you wrong. Nobody can follow the raindrops... but a poet. Am I a poet? You followed the raindrops. You accepted my head at your bosom and my hands around your waist and carried me inside the moon. Is this your house? One of the many. What are the other? You touched my mouth, and you touched my forehead, and you touched my finger and you touched my knee and you touched my eye, and you touched my palm and you touched my chest and you touched... and you touched... and...

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Youngest the gutter had a hole in it, the water flowing into a small puddle just underneath long after the rain has thundered away and three quarters of sun started peeking our way. an almost invisible curtain of spray dressed the splashing point the murmur of the thin stream almost inaudible the puddle hesitating between drying out and growing larger before I saw it. hesitating, wavering like a drunken sailor of light a needle thin rainbow shyly peeked up from the puddle reflecting its twin above and reaching hungrily for the sun calling... father... I lay down on my belly next to it caring not for my expensive suit and silk tie my head supported by palms relying on elbows to support them while soaking the thin mud and freezing cold water. a few butterflies... butterflies in winter?... appeared out of nowhere – swallowtails and elfins and coppers chasing each other and the colors and the sun drops as the sun’s youngest son painted fluorescent spots upon their tails. I felt, rather then heard, the thin wail of despair as a whiff of wind desecrated the serenity of the sky pushing the grey of cloud to cover for a moment the warm of sun and the sun’s rage tore it down to rags... too late. sun’s son was dead forever, the colors drowned in the mud of the puddle the butterflies gone there where butterflies go once the rainbows die and I fell asleep, crying for so much innocence of color lost. I woke up next morning, stiff, wet, frozen, refusing to move. I felt sun tears wetting my cheeks as he picked up the humidity from my clothes, looking there for his youngest, then telling me not to worry and not to cry as he will bury him with the summer and with the apples and with the butterflies.

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Shoe Cream I dipped my finger in the black waxy paste and smeared it on the leather rubbing it in gently. Then touched the tip of your nose and kept on smearing the shoe. You dipped your finger in it as well and touched the front of my shirt... “Hey, why did you do that? Now I will have to take it off,” and I started unbuttoning it. You looked at me askance and touched the front of your own shirt. “Hey, look what I’ve done, Now I will have to take it off,” and you started unbuttoning it. I felt vengeful, raging, I smeared your skirt You cleaned your finger on my pants I made a circle around the tip of your bra and as you touched my shorts I hooked my blackened finger in the white lace hugging your waist. There was not much left to do after that. We made love.

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Pale I have seen the red of ore melting escaping the furnace prison through overflowing red gullies and sputtering like an invading army of mad cats, The red of lipstick on the red of lips triple laid and four times bitten drops of blood staining its texture red, Poppies, then poppies petals, then poppies petals crush with a red heart of cherry under a sprinkle of red sunset drops, I have seen red, pale, so ridiculously pale... Your cheeks, you blush, where did you steal this deep of red beyond the molten ore and the stain of blood and the poppy crush with its cherry heart? You blush, even deeper... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. My eyes, hurting... Yet lovers you had and lust you have known... The fire rising inside your eyes, slowly... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. The air, crackling with insistence... And life you have lived and child you have born. The corona, blinding... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. I blushed. You blush. From not knowing of woman before my knowing of you.

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Sandglass Before I seal this midnight’s glass And blobs of time in grains amass I watch you turn, the blanket falls Deserting temple’s pallid walls, Oh, sleeping lass. The golden pile begins to rise Another moment proudly dies, You dream of ribbons in your braids A rolling blush your cheek pervades, Your pain belies. I know that crawling fire beast About to burn the trusting east, And in my terrible chagrin I do not dare to touch your skin And rape your feast. A few more specks of floating dust The shadows die in rising rust, You stretch inside your fading dream A tear invades the morning’s gleam Since wake you must. The rasping sound of dying sand, The cheek inside my crying hand, The lips about to rip apart And whispers carved inside my heart Your promise brand.

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On Your Back When you look up what do you see? I see the wheat spikes hanging low, The shadow of a passing crow, A thinning cloud above your ear, Beneath your nose a lipstick smear, A brazen, cheeky buccaneer. When you close your eyes what do you see? A field asleep beyond my time, A mouth awash with biting lime, A pair of shoes forgotten back Inside that lone and windy shack, A lad about to get a whack. When you love me what do you see? The hidden eyes of lady moon, The northern star ablaze at noon, My wishes woven into tulle, Between my arms a hungry ghoul, An ending rhyme... I love you, fool.

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Acroterion put your palm forward towards me till it touches mine heel to heel, finger to finger, let fingerprints cross and cut and penetrate through each other leaving indents of you in me. listen to muscles heaving joints cracking before fingers slide between fingers and palms clasp twining like mauling maxillae when helium cracks into hydrogen and a world is recreated in the hell born between our bones. let go of my flesh as our bodies finally dissever and smoldering remains of skin and tissue float to the linen burning large rugged holes through the mattress, through the wood, through the world. then, let my palm kiss your mouth and fall asleep beneath your ribs.

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Pale I have seen the red of ore melting escaping the furnace prison through overflowing red gullies and sputtering like an invading army of mad cats, The red of lipstick on the red of lips triple laid and four times bitten drops of blood staining its texture red, Poppies, then poppies petals, then poppies petals crush with a red heart of cherry under a sprinkle of red sunset drops, I have seen red, pale, so ridiculously pale... Your cheeks, you blush, where did you steal this deep of red beyond the molten ore and the stain of blood and the poppy crush with its cherry heart? You blush, even deeper... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. My eyes, hurting... Yet lovers you had and lust you have known... The fire rising inside your eyes, slowly... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. The air, crackling with insistence... And life you have lived and child you have born. The corona, blinding... From not knowing of man before my knowing of you. I blushed. You blush. From not knowing of woman before my knowing of you.

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Adhesion Let me lie beneath you. Slide above me. Your toe passing across my eyes, my mouth, followed by your ankle, your knee, thigh... I will... hmm... skip some details invading my sight and smell and taste till your breasts reach whatever’s left of my senses and your nipple stops somewhere between my eyes and lips and the last dregs of sanity escape my lungs with one long exhaled breath. You are not cruel, just teasing, waiting till the blue in my face beats the Grotta Azura waters then pitifully let your body slide further until the nipple falls into my mouth and I inhale it in with the rest of my life. By the time my skin is ravaged beyond recognition your mouth has reached mine, as has your chest, your knee, your toe, and the imperfect symmetry of our bodies is challenged only by the perfect adhesion of our forms.

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Drunk She pointed to the plastic bottle of water... “Do you think that would be sufficient?” “Sufficient for what?” “For getting you drunk?” I always appreciated her sense of humor so I started laughing. Then I saw she was not. Not joking, not laughing. My laughter died in an embarrassed clank of teeth biting pieces of inner cheek. Something in the choreography of this laughter was wrong. She undressed unceremoniously not even trying to seduce me, removing overwear, underwear, betweenwear, partly unbuttoning, partly ripping, completely indifferent and finally lay down on the bed the bottle held high in the air gurgling noisily all over her body, drenching the mattress, the bedding, the skin, the skin, the skin... “Dry me,” she whispered, taking the last sip into her mouth and letting it trickle down along her cheek for me to lick away. The crumpled plastic crashed to the floor. The room was hot. I shivered with unexplained fever reclining over her glinting form looking for something, and once I found her eyes I knew this is where the rest of my life starts... It was so easy drinking the little puddles sitting above closed lashes, tasting like her eyes’ color, warm like desert’s sand at midday, all those lies and superstitions about salt and tears ridiculed... I whispered dry one eyelash hair after the other, then the eyebrows one eyebrow hair after the other, I patiently separated her scalp’s hair in one hair thick strands and ran them each between my lips listening to the various whistles, and shrieks, and vowels, and consonants... “Not drunk yet,” I bragged, disconcerted by the non evaporating liquid yet believing in her eternal insanity and my eternal love and moving on with my travail. Took me the best part of the rest of the month to finish the rest of her head with only small pee interruptions (even though a poet, I am human after all) and a laborious session around her lips, her lips, her lips... damn, second time I am stuttering in this poem... then I worked on her neck and its environs for a few days, I was glad when I got to those cockeyed rosy mounds aligning her chest with cocky pride and coquettish lust and cocksure rearing, that the trapped inferno underneath did my assigned job because by that time a certain dizziness started clouding my concentration, once almost falling into the toilet bowl... Was I... after all?... My mind was not set on the navel, just one slurp and one blow... it was the next step which worried me, immensely. Since when does still water smell and taste like woman? I opened her thighs and plunged in. How long did I swim in that clear pool, chilly at the surface, boiling hot at the bottom, my only source of air the torrential pleasure pouring out of her insides and cocooning me like a larvae before painting my own colors and turning myself into a water butterfly? I kept rummaging the soft muddy bottom, sometimes penetrating the hidden source of life sometimes blown to pieces by a surge of rumbling fleshquakes, her hands working my head like a primeval pleasures tool guiding my searching lips amongst the treasures and the tortures and the infinitely exhilarating fragrances dissolving in the water, the water, the water... damn! I pulled out. Soaking wet, drunk with her water and her flavors and her musical moans admitting to my feeble humanity and to my mighty desire and to intoxication and finally dying inside her so beautifully...

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There Are No Stars In Your Eyes They all turned nebulae and novae and neutron clumps of matter the moment you decided to love and that one spark migrated from your heart to your eyes detonating the stars and turning them into nebulae and novae and neutron clumps of matter. You blinded me before Nyx pitifully pulled her black veil upon my eyes collecting in it the burning leftovers of nebulae and novae and neutron clumps of matter knotting the four corners of the cloth and stuffing it in my pocket. “This is for later, when you forget...” she whispered, disappearing, leaving me with you, her young sister, Eos. Because you fell in love with... me.

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Not Cappella Sistina Let us paint the sun on the ceiling stars around it... I know you cannot see stars with a sun blinding you, you can in love. We can add a rainbow, even more than one after all this is our sky, maybe some birds... hey, I suck at painting, I know they look like crows they are supposed to be swallows, well, big swallows... Then we can stop time. The sky never changes we live forever and the one whose back is on the bed at that time tells the one on top about the beauty of eyes and the beauty of sun and skies and the beauty of... ahmm... swallows. Why do you cry? OK, I will paint out the swallows... oh, you cry because you want more of them? because you love me? oh, no, I am not innocent, maybe naïve. Oh, I see, because I love you...

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Sorry, The Sacred Scriptures Must Be Mistaken The order of creation was all screwed up, probably to do with writing right to left or the scribe’s wife having her headache that specific day or the publisher being a male chauvinist... hmm... cannot say it, not kosher in this context. Fact is woman was created first. Then, with God suddenly finding divine inspiration in the first laughter he ever heard the rest followed so easily... heaven and day and light and sun and stars and... life. Man?... you ask? God’s only mistake. See, even God is not indifferent to woman’s charms.

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Torturer I came sculpting in your body desires with my tools of flesh ants invading your skin marrying the convulsing muscles drops of sleepless night searching for absolution in sighs breasts following the sun loins steeling in abysmal torment I came saving your dwindling sanity with my tools of flesh

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Envy Letting go of the day, watching her gather that lofty bridal gown around her thighs then rolling for her nuptial night beyond the horizon. I kicked the trailing train into the ocean, welcoming the darkness of the room, the invisible warmth radiating from your body. I envy her groom, marrying her every morning, loving her every night. You drew reflections of flowers on my chest each of your fingers another color, then started breathing reflections of flowers inside my eyes. Do you really? you finally answered after your tongue’s tip finished etching them into my lips. Do I what? I asked back, not knowing what you are talking about. That’s much better, you murmured rolling around my body, stealing my flowers. I let you do. After all, you invented love.

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The Winter Of Life I watch the crawling mist of winter’s bane A purring guile bespeckled glinting dust And harboring beneath its velvet train The swarming minutes lusting for my crust. Be gone! you flailing rag of reaper’s brand My flesh is hard, my lip still soft and rich, Before invading rot turns senses bland I’ll feed my lover’s mouth sweet ripened peach. Two summers in one winter’s breath I’ll cram My castle banners – strips of blazing skin And while your mindless hoards my ramparts ram We’ll roll in milk and nectar tinted sin. The sun forgets to hide beneath the sky Its heart ablaze with dreams of... you and I.

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Reflections I watched you brushing your hair, your movements slow, provocative, intense. You did not do it on purpose. It was that subconscious part called womanly vanity which controlled your movements and I, the spectator, was an irrelevant factor in the equation. I leaned back onto the bed’s headboard, unable to decide if the sleepy face in the mirror is more beautiful than the bare back facing me. Comparing incomparables. Until you turned around and smiled. I forgot anything I was thinking before. I fell in love. Again. * The comb had a mind of its own, sinking in that river of flowing copper descending all the way to your shoulders, then emerging victoriously again and again after tasting pleasures I will never know. Never?... I thought, remembering my fingers getting lost inside that abounding cascade, desperately looking for a way out once they got hooked inside disarrayed knots and scalp skin and shampoo fragrances. Oh, those thick strands giving up their vanity once they cradled my knuckles and shot clumps of fire right up my flexing muscles. You hummed softly, regarding my reflection from underneath coyly lowered eyelashes, playing the vampire’s innocent main course with an intensity visible only to the trained eye of one who loved you. Loved?... I heard you read my thoughts as mouth and eyes suddenly flashed into that conquering smile of yours, steaming the mirror, steaming my regards, steaming my heart when you turned around and all I could think of was the irresistible beauty of a sunrise as first seen by a blind man miraculously discovering sight. I fell in love. Is desperately the right word to use? I don’t know, I will never know, I will never care knowing. * The brush biting into your hair, hungry, your hand slave to its ebony wish my eyes slave to your shivers, my dream your universe. A piece of moon glided between your breasts hit the mirror hit my eye burning my eyelashes one iris sinking into the eye... I blinked... I found you smiling at me the brush fallen to the floor broken, your hand offering me a bouquet of hair strands knotted with red ribbons and blue beads and green ebony shards. Green ebony? I heard myself ask. Your dream, my universe, I heard you say as your bare shoulders started filling my landscape.

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Send Send me your mirror. I will lay the glass against my cheek soaking your fingerprints in before scrapping the silver to rummage though its splintered memory for reflections of you. Send me your comb. The old one, toothless, forgotten at the bottom of some cluttered drawer, the few brittle hairs clinging to it telling me stories about the way you were so many years ago. Send me an envelope, addressed. No, no need for a letter inside, one stamp will do for me to cut the corner away and soak the paper inside my mouth till the stamp comes off liberating all the tastes and aromas once abusing your tongue as their place of worship now prisoners upon mine.

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Chameleons Tell me the color of your eyes with no clothes on, I asked. Find it, she replied taking my fingers and guiding them to the first button. I opened it. How many colors are there in the world named and unnamed visible and invisible real and imaginary?... I watched, hypnotized, those chameleons I erroneously called eyes moving through every hue and shade and intensity with each button, each layer, each touch. And long after the last. Lover?... I heard a voice. I blinked stupidly. Did we make love? I asked. More than once, she answered smug, content, hiding at last the chameleons behind lowered eyelashes. I almost expected her tongue to lash out and snatch me bodily in I almost wished it... Her tongue lashed out... oh my God... just licking her lips then holding on to my upper teeth row and pulling my head down till our teeth clashed our tongues liberating chameleon knowledge unrolling and clutching and gulping...

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Under White The last vestiges of civilization, white, elastic hunger circling your chest and hanging on to your hips after all preliminaries are done and symbolism is the only frontier left to cross. I feel like tearing them to shreds... carefully I unhook your brassiere watching pride take form and shape and color the thumb sliding into the waistband and pulling down, down, down past your knee, past your ankle, past your big toe and all which is left is the under white. The cloth stains litter the floor, deserted by life shrunken to the inexistence of rags dull, the flesh under white whiter than a magnesium flame than a sun flare groping my hands and demanding retribution inflicted upon the perpetrator of love. I volunteer for punishment, the white streaks leaping from your body chaining flesh to flesh to white and my insane bellows could easily be mistaken for yowls of delight.

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Young Young beyond your age, the skin splitting at the corners of your eyes guiding your tears sideways... first time you cry so many years since last, once when you were old and wise to know. The sudden lilt in your step the pirouette in your toes an innocent blue through green through grey through blue playing havoc on your eyes and my sanity knowing that today lasts forever and tomorrow isn’t even a horrible fairytale. No music, no colors, no taste, just one uninterrupted touch between finger and skin and skin and finger... was the beauty your smile or was the smile your beauty as you knew of tomorrow’s never coming? Tomorrow came. Found you sitting cross legged in front of a chocolates box your innocence gone, not so your youth if not for those splits of skin guiding your tears sideways. A praline died inside a mouth murderously protesting the insanity of life, brown blood spilling off your lip as your fixed gaze said nothing saying it all with tear residue and crystals materializing at the edges of those sideways splits. Humans call them wrinkles We call them smile leftovers. The chocolate blood turned mud. I licked it away and your frozen gaze melted allowing me an undisturbed view into happiness, momentary, yet so deep that it took me hours to find my way out discovering that the reality of it lies in a crumb of chocolate, an ink stain, a tip of tongue offering the promise of love undying. The rest is life. Illusion.

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Pint Pint size volcano, still bubbling. I gave up my efforts to quench its thirst. Had to accept the hard evidence its hard link to earth’s core, my pathetic human efforts embarrassing. “Don’t give up,” she encouraged. “Will I ever succeed?” “Never,” and she was all over me once more scalding my tender flesh into raw meat. “Fairy...” “Yes?” “Are fairies human?” I shouldn’t have asked, or maybe I should have asked earlier. Inside one night I graduated in biology, mineralogy, astronomology... “Hey, you’ve mixed up your sciences.” I lifted my head from between... wherever, looking at her. “I’m creating a new one, for you.” She accepted the compliment with a sigh (it was not compliment, it was fact) and pushed my head back between... wherever. She was ready to put me through hell again, bubbles, ash, lava absorbing me anew. Not much flesh left on my bones, dying was such pleasure. “Fairy...” “Yes?” “Are fairies allowed to fall in love with humans?” “If they insist. Do you insist?” “Do I have to?” “No.” “Yes.” “Yes.” I let her teach me the rest of the sciences. Then she found a last spot of unblemished skin on my body and made sure to burn it as well. I was in pain. In love. “Fairy, do you love me?” Vanity is at times one’s worst enemy. She set to prove it to me all over again, the pint size volcano my gaol, my dungeon, my heaven.

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Adytum Nothing between your shirt and your skin but my skin, stretched upon lecherous fingers sinking into breasts’ beguiling quicksand. I refused to share my flesh spoils with clowns hanging down from the night’s sky ironically called stars and moons and tail-less comets. Bed sheets enveloped us with white intimacy allowing the amorphous shapes once called bodies merge into one single fluid sculpture. It took forever to disentangle burned limbs disregarding the insistence of raining rays knocking pitifully at the door of our adytum.

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Opened You opened the door to you. The secrets in your mind no more secret your body kissing my mind with knowledge and stories of love and of fairies and of dreams unknown to me you once dreamt of... us. I turned page after page, dipping finger in mouth and turning one skin sheet after the other, running the fingertip along lines unwritten to be read unread to be written the mystery of you I never knew until you opened the door to you. I could not swim so I drowned. Maybe I could swim yet I preferred to sink, words floating above me cluttering the surface of your heart with scouring tongues of fire purging it of pain and questions and dark corners making the nest ready for... us. Finally I had to breathe the beauty too rich to be absorbed my lungs burning with the caress of riddles untangled sculpting meanings freshly discovered into my consciousness I looked for life from your lips at the bottom of love I could not swim so I drowned.

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m The quiet, the love, the warmth, words unnecessary. Letters, maybe letters can say it better than words... mmm? I asked, playing my part of the innocent. m? you answered, hiding your part of innocence under eyelashes and blush, actually peeking, I saw you. mmm?... I tried to emphasize the idea with guttural noises and raised eyebrows. mm mmm? you kept making as if you didn’t understand taking a bite in that apple. You never could hide behind an apple and you knew it, the effort wasted the result invariably the same - victory. Victory for whom? I decided to add a few words to my lexicon, after all we were both hominoids and diversity is one of those overrated yet really useless attributes. mmm! m m? mmmmm... I first demanded, then ended on a degradingly supplicating note making various signs and motions with eyes and feet and jerking my head in the general direction of the bed, hiccupping. No, we were not Neanderthals if one wonders and that was not a mossy rock I was pointing to but rather a modern, soft, white, fragrant bed, a ten inch thick three layers rich import mattress upon its frame with silk bedding sprinkled eau de cologne and lilac petals (imagine the time it took me to pluck one full bucket of them) and I even had it tied around twice with red ribbon and crystal beads. You decided to open your eyes, suspecting me of cheating... how could you? I wasn’t, well, not really. I was about to fall to my knees to prove it when you caught me under the armpits pitting your belly against mine and asking trying to convince yourself before finally giving in... (yippee... in parentheses since I did not really say it, you know...) m m mmmmm?... was your question. m! m! m! I nodded my head vigorously looking for pity, understanding, a pat on the head, I wish I had a tail... mmm?... still hesitating, you... m mm mmm!!! not hesitating, I... What followed is indescribable, and anyway paper cannot relay accurately a duet such as the one ending this episode. I wish I knew to write musical notes. The closest I can play it in your mind is by quoting our reverberating words, once we said in unison... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

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Layers Go on, you said, when I reached your skin. There is no on, I answered, in fear. Try, you said, guiding me to the breastbone and leaving me there, around your feet those irrelevant layers of civilization now discarded, forgotten. I pinched your skin between thumb and forefinger and rolled it out of the way... is this where you were hiding them all those years? the songs inside piano’s white, the dreams beyond tomorrow’s night, your horse asleep in fever’s glade beneath the reaper’s glinting blade. I impressed on the heel of my palm the ribbons of your music, the feathers of your dreams’ wings, then stained the immaculate blade with my thumb’s blood as I pushed it rudely aside mounting the rearing steed and galloping into your opening bone. The skin closed behind me. Miles and miles and miles of unpicked cotton fields their red poppy heads telling stories of imagination imperishable in its resplendence. in braided manes of neighing herds the frilly tunes of nestling birds enchase new rainbows in the wood across from reaper’s gloomy hood. I stole with flicks of tongue gemstones from your trotting horses’ hooves, flowers sprouting in your mane deep nests, then pulled the ridiculous hood down hanging on to it with my teeth mocking the apparition and gliding on my belly up the rainbow till I reached your heart, wounding, penetrating, staying. The bone closed behind me. Home. It was the time of season of year for lovers’ fallows to be seeded anew ribbons and feathers and gemstones and flowers and walls grew around me immuring me inside your heart’s wild beauty. the reaper’s gone to lands beyond, I snapped my one and only wand then laid to sleep my bone and time inside your home of flesh and rhyme.

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A Lesson In Love Sulking in a corner, eyes red, nose running out of control, my mouth suckling noisily on a dirty thumb. A grown up. A kid. A blob of flesh trying desperately to fill that apex of urban architectural geometry composed of floor’s ice cold tiles and adjacent walls’ chilly dampness. A door. A momentary current of air. I hear the staccato rush of heels approaching, a voice... “...what happened?...” as a blanket drops over my shoulders and she sits down next to me collecting my parts from floor, walls, hugging. “I missed you,” I manage to say. “But I was gone for less than a minute...” she says. “I missed you,” I answer stubbornly crawling into her robes, into her body, letting her lull me to sleep as her thumb replaces mine and the world is beautiful once more. She told me later that I smiled all my way into the morning. “How do you know?” She shows me her raw thumb, laughing happily. “Oh, I am sorry,” I yelp apologizing, kissing it. “Don’t worry about my thumb, you should see my nipple...” she laughs again, snuffing my newly emerging apology with a well placed kiss. “That will teach you a lesson,” she adds mysteriously guiding my head back to her breast and wincing in pain as I pick up on my unfinished job. I guess it is a lesson in love that she means.

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Trespasser Unzipping the east the master predator sends long undulating fingernails to cut narrow slices of cloud thinking the other God owes him a favor for painting those impressive crowns sky born earthwards with sheaves of penetrating rays thrown your way the way white rice crowns wedding and bride... white, yellow, purple, red... and the grey of jagged cloud breaches. Hide your pale, lover, don’t let the trespasser’s eye touch it, be it Sol or God, pull down the shades and pull closed the curtains and nail shut the boards upon the windows and birds will sing the morning into the sky and rays will rain blindly upon the shades and the curtains and the boards dying by the dozens and the billions falling into a heap of ribbons at the foot of the wall at the end of the world at the beginning of beauty. And beauty will uncover of her uncolored dresses and of her white filigree woven silk woven satin woven lace laying cloth to floor and skin to bed and the phosphor flowing inside gleaming veins lights the ceiling reflecting in tear ridden eyes and smile ridden teeth when my hand touches your breast and your fingers pick up pieces of my flesh to drop on the tip of your tongue knowing this is the door no one ever entered except for your lover, not Sol, not God, I.

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Warring The Light Don’t let the smile of morning’s God Dissecting cloud’s imposing squad Invade your placid ley of rest Beyond horizons rolling west         with wishes odd. Beware of tendrils laden mirth As spider flames of needle girth Purloin your cheek’s awaking red And paint the mountain’s grizzled head         with glamour’s birth. Deny the birds of lurid skill The right to perch upon your sill And preach that east’s emerging glow Is some ornithic candles show         of light and trill. Behold as skydom’s armies’ might Like some uncalled for scheming blight Besiege my mouth and fingers’ tips Approaching your unfolding lips         and skin’s delight. Now... pull the shades upon the world And as your beauty lies unfurled Let lover’s hands immesh your flesh With touches lewd and kisses fresh         and ribbons curled.

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Ignition Ugly, the young she-human monster blue of big eyes and red of ravenous mouth and small of soft breasts and long of luscious legs and narrow of nectarean waist in resplendent bridal white the golden barbed wire around her finger avidly stealing her virginity with a one night’s philter and a year’s nepenthe and a lifetime’s debilitating opium seeping into her vein... inert, on a thin glass sheet so fragile in her humanity and eternity’s sleep. Handsome, the old I-reptile dragon green of giant scales and fiery of fearsome muzzle and wrathful of wide wings my pockets heavy with collapsing stars and glinting comet tails the wasp sting in my heart pouring its venom dulling my senses and rolling my body and emptying my pockets falling stars crushing worlds and runaway comets burning galaxies until my body crashed into the thin glass sheet gashing my chest and her red of ravenous neared my fiery of fearsome and she opened her eyes in wonder. We immerged into each other, scales to skin and muzzle to mouth and claw to clasp of hand the fire of famished hearts cleansing our bodies of life’s poisons my roar turning into her song her laughter turning into my fingertips and us falling into the heart of the sorrowful giant star igniting it into Sun.

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Anatomy Of Missing When did I miss you more? When you deserted the bed tiptoeing bare assed to the bathroom middle of the night and for minutes few all I was left with was your warmth and your smell and your wrinkled pillow and those sounds telling me you were unmistakably unreachable, the panic setting in my body hardly able to cure itself even when that chilly, partly wet skin crawled back my side of the bed trying to infiltrate boldly every crevasse of a flesh sweating its fright into the covers? Or when I deserted your side dragging the dead weight of a meaningless suitcase into an equally meaningless lobby cluttered with a part of mankind I bore no relation to except that it breathed the same air you breathed seconds ago, and I kept walking, nose in the air, sniffing for those molecules which probably evaded the confined gardens of your lungs from time to time finding myself rushing like a madman from one corner of the big hall to the other swatting or sweeping or swashing a butterfly net in a doomed effort to get some of them into a tin box and carry them with me into that part of my life where you wouldn’t be present for many days? Or when, swarms of butterflies invading my eyes, I tried to remember those swarms of butterflies escaping yours?

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Sunflowers I plucked you out of my imagination, drawing shoes to your feet and clothes to your flesh and mascara to your eyes only to be able to pull you out of your shoes and clothes and mascara and make love to your skin. After. Sated. I, not you, the red one-flower orchards of your breasts blossoming under the sun of my palm following it wherever it moved, stretching the delicate tissue supporting them in a glorious effort to kiss my life-line until, cruelly, I moved my hand to your spine and they couldn’t follow anymore. They snapped back in place stabbing me murderously in the chest dissatisfied with the sudden sunset. We should call them palmflowers, I whispered between your teeth sounding to myself more like a hiss than a whisper. True, you hissed back rolling inside my embrace till the palmflowers settled firmly again at the crossroads between the fate-line and head-line of each of my palms in that mindless worshiping adulation of flesh for flesh. Tell me, I asked further, it never crossed your mind to call my palms... nippleflowers?

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Forgive My Inspiration Forgive my inspiration, you stole it. It ended up with your mouth, choking in cruel asthmatic deprivation of the deoxygenated air once deserting my breathing paths and feeding your cavernous moistness with wheezing delights. It was adopted into your fingers and their desperado tips, chasing inexistent forms on the empty bedside next to you in a hallucinogenic attempt to create skin off the torn pillow case and flesh off scattering down sticking to the tar underneath your eyes. It collapsed inside your hip-hugging lace, sinking into a mire excoriated of its surface rushing spiders and bleeding giant nuphars and mesozoic iguanas carrying the seed of creation from the day God’s finger touched the water. * I form a familiar number, a few technological clicks, and familiar music invades my ear... Hello... and suddenly I am flooded with air and flesh and iguanas and inspiration is but a meaningless word evanescing in the beauty of you.

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A Day's Seasons Mountains, clapping their heads inside your chest, Was this the sound I heard first time I laid my ear to its awaking bareness? Sunrise. Gale, confined to a room, a bed, a bed sheet, Was this the fist squishing our bodies into an amorphous writhing mass of beautiful agony? Sunshine. Clouds, wrung into ribbons knotted to your eyelashes, Was this the river carrying rolling boulders down your cheeks the last time you saw me? Sunset.

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Blind Moment Squeeze my fist between your thighs. Let straining knuckles struggle for the freedom of fingers stretching the thin fiber of resisting underwear until a broken finger gashes a rugged hole through the thin fabric sinking into that mire of indecorous sensations and dragging the rest of my body inside your flooding ecstasy the while lupine teeth sink vertebrae deep into each other’s neck muscle... Pulling out... teeth, body, fist... the smell of freshly spilled love draws glinting paths down your thighs as you slowly lick my wound, whimpering.

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Today Threatening, the dark grey mountains mass lending its sharply outlined irregular crests to a darkness engorging my surrounding horizons, was not there yesterday. Alone, my car keeps its eastward rush infatuated with the importance of its own phlegmatic lull and completely out of tune with looming unknown growling there, beyond. A pale red drifts above the shimmering black outline shifting hue into scintillating scarlet and suddenly deep crimson layers of lazy magma climb above the ridges and start pouring down the fading slopes, advancing, converging from all sides upon my indifferent car with the confidence of a leopard... paw lifts to strike... Burning rubber smells assail me, tires explode in random sequence as I leave my clothes behind and dive in swimming upward towards the rolling vertex leaving a flaming magma trail behind and slowly sinking inside that incinerating viscid swamp howling, howling, howling... I feel a quake, a shudder, a hand shaking me awake beneath eyes watching me worriedly, “Lover, lover, you had a nightmare...” I hug her waist hungrily burying my head inside the soft breast, still howling, finding the fire in her flesh and crying, “It was not a nightmare, it was beautiful, it was your love...” She knows better than contradict me, she accepts my tears watching them sizzle on her nipple then turn incandescent steam then burn holes through the desert of smoldering bed-sheet fabric.

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Rainbow To stretch your body across the sky inside rain, inside sky, your toes touching horizon’s edge your fingertips sunk deep into... my heart. To feel like God, light pouring out of my chest in all the colors of beauty and white the huge inverted smile of your rainbow plucking my ribs into a tune you hear and I feel. To reach across the miles and gather those toes and ankles and collapsing knees into my arms and redesign your spine to its subdued foetal curvature fingers knotting their steel around my neck. To fold your body around mine and forget that once upon a time you were a rainbow in my sky and now, you are the rainbow coiling between my skin and my flesh.

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Succumbed I feel like more and once again committing sinful rhymes And place my tip of tongue and lip inside some rolling dimes Then wait beneath the marble stairs for you to lose your shoe And pay my tribute to your toes with poems overdue. So supple, keen, your ankle lean and velvet pearls guise your soles, Gyrating, soft, a breezy waft upon my skin its marvel scrolls. Inside its cage of sordid nights a nightmare cries forlorn Then falls asleep at soothing sounds of wailing doomsday’s horn, You pour the salt inside my tear to guide my way astern Before your nipples paint my lids with passion’s chanting burn. A touching glance, a sweet romance inside your closing little fist, Your elbow’s smile so mean and vile defeats my eyes with frolic’s mist. Between the lines of crumbling odes asleep in ancient tomes And wonder runes in heedful care of hefty senile gnomes I leave the horses of my mind to roam till sunset dawns Then beg of them to carry home the grace of sobbing swans. Your rounded hip, your iron grip, your mouth above that stubborn chin, My singing wraith, my doom, my faith, my music’s verse enchased with sin.

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Not Just Your Shoe Wondering at a sun rising underneath the staircase, is it a whole sun or just a crumb or just your shoe, rolling down there last night when I carried you in my arms to our bed? For a moment I thought you lost your little toe inside that shoe as I could not find it when I tried to kiss it, that could have explained the blast and radiance. Then I found out you painted it with invisible ink trying to make me think you are a buggy eyed monster. You did not paint your eyes with any buggy ink letting my lips do it with words, incantations, prayers, I rhymed eyes with thighs and you whacked me only to have an excuse to kiss me later. As if you needed any excuse. I kept investigating your body parts, by now several suns colliding incoherently from several floor spots - a button, a second shoe, one stocking - guiding my thirst and competing with access to your folds and blush and soft... I shooed them all away making sure I am the only one partaking in your nightmares and those odd dimensions turning them sad. What is a sad nightmare if not a smiling memory? You allowed me to paint a crude heart and arrow on your elbow using lipstick and eye crayon and black match-heads ignited inside those meddlesome suns. You did not mind the rest of my verses, those stolen from your ransacked mind and from my delirious exclamations when allowed to ride my horses galloping around your hips and inside your mouth and upside down hanging on to your chin till exhausted we all swam side by side inside your eyes, you, and I, and my horses and all those graceful silver tinted swans.

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Wood The paper naked underneath me underneath my hand, cuddling against my skin with its unmistakably erotic memories of wood and bark and perching storks until death marched in its blaringly glorious sounds of snapping nests and trampling boots and a wails-drowning army of buzzing saws. No one heard the tree cry. I touch the paper again trying to soothe its pain with the warmth of my palm and my words. “What are you doing?” you ask leaning appetizingly naked against my shoulder, your smell not unlike that of living wood and living bark and freshly raked earth. “I am telling the paper a love story,” I answer. “Need I be jealous?” “It is our love story,” I answer, not telling you about that first intimate moment, the first touch. “I know about it,” you smile taking your hand away from the paper and sitting in my lap, hands behind my neck, knees drawn up to your chest while I keep scribbling fervidly my love story on the stretched skin of your shoulder blades.

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Spelling Mistake I opened the doors to your temple, button after holy button, kissing each with reverence before unfolding the piece of cloth attached to it, so many doors, so many locks, hey, I bet no respectable worshipping warrior ever heard of zipper doors or magnetic clasps or velcro strips... the perils a knight faces today before penetrating that inner sanctum holding... woman. “You sound sweetly irreverent, my lover,” she said kissing the bald spot on the top of my head (she knew I hated her doing that, knights are not supposed to be bald) and pushing a finger inside my mouth (she also knew how to mollify me) “I may just don my chastity belt,” she added suavely. Not after all this travail, I thought savagely and hastened to correct my spelling mistake... the perils a knight faces today before penetrating that inner sanctum holding... Woman. “That’s much better,” she purred, finally wrapping up her chewing gum and dropping it into the waste basket (a waste basket in heaven?... modern heavens these) and helping me with the rest of the doors. She had to, my hands were shaking. I wonder how Homer would have described them modern gods, I thought as the last door unfolded (or rather downfolded, an elastiband lock to this one) and she gathered me into her arms and into her body, praying (I, not she). The world ended. Veneration turned slaughter as the beast ripped innocence to shreds and shyness to tatters and modesty to crumbling clay and my body burned its way through the seven doors of love’s purgatory, no zippers, no magnetic clasps there, the doors light, the hinges oiled, the fire divine. I woke up in heaven, my head on Woman’s bosom (yeap, no spelling mistakes this time), my body one lump of hurts. “Awthuw was a mowon”, I declared. “Awthuw?” she asked, once more chewing her gum (a new one) and popping vanilla flavored balloons. I couldn’t speak clearly, not with her finger constantly searching something in my mouth, so gently yet firmly I pulled it out. “Arthur, the king. He went looking fow (oops...) for his holy grail miles from home inside stone temples. He should have looked for it a hand’s reach away, insides the clothes temple of Gwenhwyfar.” “Here you go irreverent again,” she pinched me (it hurt but it was with love so I didn’t scream). I turned to face her, Woman or not Woman I was still Lover (hey, I like this spelling mistake) pinning her arms to her sides, dominating her (stop snickering there...). “You are the holy grail, I worship you, Woman,” I said hastily before she had a chance to kick me between my... things, and watched her melt to a puddle and soak into the bedding. Well, this is just some poetical nonsense metaphor. What I mean to say is... well, what did I mean to say?... (and she touched me, watching me melt to a puddle and soak into the bedding). Did you ever see two puddles... p-u-d-d-l-e-s not p-o-o-d-l-e-s, you dorks... make love? They merge, and mingle, and coalesce, and fuse, the drops immerging, the ripples germinating, sprouting, propagating, the fiber of space cracking, matter transmuting laws dying and then... have you ever visited the heart of a supernova in making?

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Lazy Colors I didn’t write you a poem this morning. I feel lazy, for once the lampposts look menacing, the sky is covered with fluffy horizontal stripes of spitting red... spitting red, hey, I like this color, a fast train swooshes by to my right... are you in it? The spitting red turns sniveling yellow, at this rate I will finish my ride with seventy three new colors, seventy three kilometers to go, one color per kilometer, by now the sky gets scratching white... see?... told you, did I tell you I love you? I love you. Not a color this one, a cornucopia overflowing with mango and pineapple and oranges... peeled, of course peeled, also the bananas, the pears, the watermelons... no, not the cherries, those I pick straight from your tongue red raw ripe... mmm... drunk on juicy alliterations... oops, missed a few kilometers, missed a few colors, me and my gardening... ok... and your garden... The sun suddenly kicks my eyes with a glare clad hoof peeping up from below the horizon and I have to pull down the passenger’s side sun visor a square halo forming itself around it... Saint Visor... I smile to myself regaining the right side of the road. Sleepy blue, not the sun, your eyes. I love you.

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Apocalypsis It happened one day, suddenly. No one could explain. The sun exploded, not with a bang but with a puff its belly bulging for one short, frightening moment of consuming fever and the next it exploded into trillions and trillions of butterflies flying their lazy butterfly way to... earth. The chilly darkness, death awaiting as humans cried and animals whimpered and the ocean’s face started to freeze. Weeks, many, later they started arriving, their wings white their antennae white their eyes glowing a deep red surrounded white landing, touching, flying again, landing, touching... We watched the one approaching us, uncaring, us and it, soaking into the glass and emerging our side of the room avoiding the last candles still burning upon shelves and upside down turned wineglasses, fluttering a few moments above our heads as if hesitating and finally landing on your mouth. White... turning pink... turning scarlet... turning red... was it a roar we heard as it suddenly rose into air smashed out through the glass panel all the trillions and trillions of butterflies clustering around it a gigantic swarm spouting upwards through icicles of air and clumps of void in an apocalyptic landscape of death and creation... explosion... It exploded, the sun, not with a bang but with a puff and humans laughed and animals howled and fishes jumped out of ocean’s waters... I looked at your lips, not wondering, knowing. I love you even more than that butterfly, I said. And you knew.

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Breaking The Bread Sitting across from you, the wooden table in between, wooden chairs, wooden spoons, wood carved bowls filled with simmering soup, the air shimmering above the freshly baked bread you laid on the table moments ago. “Break the bread,” I said. “No, you break,” you said. “No, you... please...” You picked up the hot loaf and broke its end offering me the steaming, fragrant piece of life. I took it, kissing it, kissing your fingers, kissing you. Later, we sat swinging on the porch, counting fingers, birds, squirrels nibbling our toes.

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Scrap I see your fingers stretching way beyond your arm, your palm, trying to reach mine all those miles away... is there a tremor in their tips sending pain waves my way and asking for my fingernails to scrap bits of skin off them taking off the pain with the warmth of touch? I refuse to scrap bits of skin, I prefer to let them reach my mouth search for my tongue, my palate, the inside of my teeth and my cheeks and as they pull away from that humid sanctuary scrap bits of flesh from my lips allaying their wanting pain with bits of me. Your turn to refuse. We meet halfway, twining left with right till shoulders ache and lips curl with unfulfilled desires and birds perching on our wire thin arms scrap song dents into gossamer thin skin. I wonder if these are the same songs. I guess they are, are there any other songs lovers know?

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Another Moment Another moment, came, passed, you are not there and the moment is lost never to be recovered. So many of them. I do not remember, I do not care, it is one moment less towards the moments with you then, when eyes close and hands bind and our cube of momentary reality is the only universe which counts in this human drama called love. I would not swap any grain of my small confined claustrophobic space carrying traces of your breath for the whole of the infinite space outside of our cube carrying all of the known suns and fragrances yet... none of yours.

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Little Murders don’t dream of me, don’t caress, kiss, embrace, just write a poem with your fingernail on my back as I suckle your breast hungrily. if I fall asleep as I certainly will please, don’t take offence, it is not in disrespect. it is in trust that your murderous fingers will find my heart to crush its walls enter and join there my dream, where I caress, kiss, embrace you.

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The Middle Of You Bending backwards, your spine a perfect circle, fingertips touching heels breasts stretched till they are nothing thicker than skin nipples red stains and your heartbeat looks like a fist trying to ram its way out of your chest again and again. You smile, closing your eyes invitingly offering me the middle of you. I am less supple, brittle rings counting the years in my bones and the cracks in my joints yet I try, way a dog scratches and scratches and rolls and rolls on his blanket before finally lying down. I contort and deform and convolute till all that is left of me is not much more than an almost perfect meat ball hardly fitting in the middle of the circle in the middle of you. You bend further, your palms reaching the back of your knees when I am finally clamped tightly inside of you and we look like a surrealistic nughtmare subtitled Love. Break perfection, you ask of me and my arm finds its way out of the tangle crawling its way blindly around till a nipple take pity budding its flower and my thumb and forefinger close around it. Having found imperfection we fall asleep.

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Cloud I let crumbs of chocolate fall into my mouth from a crumpled package just opened and turned upside down way above my head. They melt even before reaching the wet haven brown drops of cocoa rain staining my lips, staining my tongue, my nose, my freshly starched shirt. I hold out my cupped palms underneath the invisible cloud, the splashing stains accumulating into the puce procellous puddle crashing against the finger borders of the fleshy basin. My turn... you claim, shamelessly opening your shirt and shoving me out of the way puffing your chest and looking upward towards the inexistent chocolate sky. Trails of rolling drops run down your shoulders and up the stiff hills of your breasts where they hang hesitatingly to the tips of your nipples. I lick noisily the thick liquid mud from my palms then rush forward lapping up the liqueur off your nipples before gravitation has a chance to lay claim of priority to love. Then I wipe my hands on your back and belly’s skin just a poor excuse to be allowed the embarrassing travail of licking you clean top to bottom... and other places.

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The Wait beneath desire’s crimpled wraps bruised leftovers remember moments the muscled lianas of bare limbs contorting into that frightful hold the air rolling its flaming carpet inside sizzling blobs of sweat the tune of screeching bed springs playing its rickety aria of love beneath desire’s crimpled wraps bruises pray for tomorrow’s rampage

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Simple bending a tree trunk with my bare hands until it snaps, I can. gashing my flesh with a serrated knife without screaming, I can. dreaming snakes curling around my ankles and slithering upwards smiling in my sleep, I can. passing one single moment of consciousness not thinking of you, I can not.

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Accomplished Stop counting or we’ll never make love in this lifetime. We were one week later and I was still stuck at her left little toe counting her imperfections. I had a full body to tour. She had a valid point there yet I still hesitated. You hesitate, she admonished me. No, I am mourning one week lost and discovery unaccomplished. Roll around and you will mourn no more. I rolled around, getting her on top of me the night sky on top of her the stars on top of the sky, countless sparkling imperfections... ...just like mine, she added making love to me while I was busy counting. Now, thinking back, I am not so sure anymore – were those sparkling stars not simply in my eyes?

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Bi-Selenial Two moons, a new world, looking down at two moons palely reflecting an invisible sun’s light... for a moment I lost sight of them and the next they were looking up at me again. Silly man, there is just one moon, these are the reflections in my eyes, and she tried to distract me pulling my head down. She may be right, she may be crazy I told myself, trying to poke at one of the moons with my finger. Hey, careful, she laughed, the moons hiding and re-appearing once more. That proves it beyond doubt, I told myself again, triumphantly, she is crazy thinking I can touch the moon, and this time I allowed myself be pulled down unwilling to witness her folly. She fully compensated for her limited mental abilities with corporeal abilities. Poor girl, she will never see the beauty of that bi-selenial landscape. Oh, you are so wrong, she giggled rolling me on my back then laughing hysterically at my surprised look as I watched that round yellow stain beyond her right shoulder before her mouth took over the skies.

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What Is It With My Passion, Actually? The thin layer of hot oil clinging adoringly to the bottom of the frying pan, so deluding in its quiet smoothness and beguiling softness and somnolence... until a few drops of water gone astray commit the uncommitable diving into the luring semblance of heaven where a raging hell breaks loose deadly loads of flaming fluid catapulting their incinerating presence through air and skin and bone and woe to all and any who lives and breathes and nears that simmering lair. The squirrel sized mini pinscher ridiculously piping its so called bark and needle teeth and a long pink tongue looking for a master’s nose wagging a tail’s stump that’s seen a better day once upon... and then you feed it a bloody bone thrice its size to watch a toy suddenly turn feral and a mountain lion infest a once pet a dark line of stiffening hair thistles running an errand muzzle tip to tail end the ferocious bug ready to take on an army of humans and beasts and dragons and tear to tattered shreds any whose misfortune was to dare and penetrate the inner radius of the sanctum of its ferine momentary absolute kingdom of instincts. I, so called human, not condiment, not beast, maybe homo sapiens, humoral liquids of various kinds lazily strolling my alleys and valleys forgetful of the moments before and mindless of the moments after their only landscape a boringly repetitive venue of inner fibers and vessels and temporarily gushing lacerations... then a piece of you, be it a piece of tooth or of skin or of word touches a piece of me, be it a piece of flesh or of nerve or of sight and within fractions of second internal rivers billow into beating gales endowed with protean primal powers unremembered moments before deadly moments after abusing my body with demands beyond its feeble frame feeding it with the scream still hiding in Pandora’s chest of horrors and the thunder not yet relinquished by Thor’s hammer and the winged neigh escaping Medusa’s severed neck my flabby muscle turning bow’s string my skin turning glass strewn fields my breath burning its way through your gaping mouth into your fleshy texture and your body imploding before fulminating into resplendent desires clothing our nakedness with a comet’s melting heart of ice and passion. * My goodness, you said moments after, amassing flaming leftovers of us from ceiling, clouds, sky, the broken window pane leaving jagged red traces long your arms, you really meant your words. I always mean my words, I answered.

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The Color Of Grey You mounted the stairs I opened the door You closed the door I turned on the light You turned off the light I undressed you We made love. Giggle. “What?” “And who undressed you?” I blushed the color of poppy. “You blushed the color of poppy.” I blushed the color of two poppies. “Will you turn my seed to your drug?” “Your seed is my drug.” I blushed the color of three poppies. You snuggled deeper into me. “You have a very limited colors vocabulary, you know?” “Red is the color of love.” “Do you know other colors?” “I know the color of grey.” “What is the color of grey?” “Blue.” You cried. I dressed you You turned on the light I turned off the light You opened the door I closed the door You descended the stairs. And who dressed you? I could hear the walls mocking me. I blushed the color of three violets.

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Wings I wipe with thumb that shallow valley beneath your eye and above your cheek, I pull between thumb and forefinger the left corner of your mouth upwards... you look ridiculous... I pull up the right one as well... much better... stay!... don’t move while I peel the artificial layers of skin from your body until you lie there your white shivering on white and your breast nestles in the hollow of my palm rolling around looking for a more comfortable position... hey, tell it to stop moving, I get blisters... better now? No, I will not cover you, I want to see your flesh fall to sleep while I count goosebumps chasing pleasures into your body and the number of times your toes twitch imagining themselves wings.

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Pastels Beneath the mountain hides a dream beneath the dream a morning’s gleam then deep below sweet mother’s crust a promise sleeping in a scream. What master’s furnace forged the lea and on the lea a maiden’s knee a maiden’s eye inside a book and drunken beetles in her tea? I dug the mountain found the dream and from the dream I stole the gleam then rhymed the promise in her book till beetles in her teardrop swim.

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Age What is your age? I asked. My age? You mean My age beneath the guise of dye At ease among my sleeping grey My age inside the shine of eye Embellished wrinkled sheets of clay The one so thick around a waist upon a time so pure and chaste? I mean... You mean A belly bluish-vessels rife Along a navel’s sagging line A breast once feeding wailing life And cheeks bespattered crystal brine The one forgetting count of years as night unloads its haul of fears? No, I mean... You mean The stumbling steps of now and then When trying rumba’s hasty pace And bleeding vowels from a pen Retrieving last of autumn’s grace The one behind the mirror’s wall when stars my wish on landscapes scrawl? Now - shut up and listen, woman! I mean to say... so young, how? Oh... You mean The doll I lay to bed at night The ribbon tied around my wrist The poems scribbled on a kite That frog I yesterday have kissed The harebrained sail upon the dew while shrieking songs of – I love you?

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Philosophy Killers I watch your profile against the bus pane cutting with its sharp outline the flowing landscape, your transparent, barely visible, reflection echoing that part of your visage I cannot see... is that a tear there hanging on to the other eye? Does the moon cry as well on the hidden part of its face, the one we never see? I think philosophically, as you turn your head towards me allowing me to see both the hidden half of your visage and the tear glowing there killing my philosophical moony mood and filling my eyes and mind with that huge smile of yours. I decide to fight back, unwilling to give up my philosophical moment in time, stubbornly claiming repossession and changing only the moony with rainy, the tear... rain, the smile... sun, hey, aren’t rain and sun supposed to engender a rainbow together? You turn your head away, looking ahead of you once more, and I watch the tear’s reflection rolling down your cheek... oh, my God, reality killing my philosophy again as a tiny rainbow imprisoned in that blob of dematerialized happiness rolls along with it until, after a slight hesitation, it ends its way inside your sun. I love you, I say, and you just don’t understand why.

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Beyond Nonsense sit in my lap. now count my lips with yours. there are more... and more... more... seventy four of them? wow, and you counted one hundred forty three tongues? yes, I am a monster. yes, this is true as well, you love me. I am your monster. teddy monster. to sit in your lap? I will crush you. ok, if you don’t care... hey, you are tickling why do you slide your finger up and down my chest? measuring my skin? how many... much... whatever skin you measured? only three? oh, three thousand... three thousand what? stop kissing... oh, three thousand kisses? do I wait for you to finish? three thousand kisses later. three thousand more. and so on. after a few millions I was supposed to be old, very old. “you are never old when you count your life in kisses,” you said. I had to admit, I felt millions of kisses older yet not even one day.

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Poetical Melancholies Crime, A horrid tale, a poet’s crime, I dipped my pen in viscid grime And spilled my wine for mellow lime When I deserted rhymes sublime. But beauty lies there in the spell beneath those random words The way a silver string convenes the fleeting chirps of birds. I looked at her. Was it intelligence? Was it love? Song, I miss the trill inside my song, From wailing flute to baying gong The spark which never did go wrong And marbles tinkling all along. Yet tender is the humming voice of midnight’s mourning dove And rhymeless is a puppy’s bark effused adoring love. I looked at her. She was winning. I hated it. Runes, The magic thread of flowing runes, Like sprouting grass on glowing dunes Ablaze with starlight’s dying croons And lilac’s silent morning tunes. Behold that twitch when by mistake your finger’s touching mine Is this not poem’s most sublime of rune, of song, of wine? I looked at her. She finally won the argument. I love you, I said.

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Phones You picked up the phone, laughing. “What are you laughing at?” “I don’t laugh at, I am happy.” “Happy at what?” “Not happy at, happy that you rang.” “But you were laughing already before you picked up.” “It was your kind of ring.” “I am calling from a public phone.” “So?” It was clear. I should not object to the obvious. She was either crazy or in love. Or both. “Both.”

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The Stage. The Journey. An overturned glass of wine, a crawling stain soaking into the linen spreading like a bleeding Antarctica looking for an ever eluding sanctuary from a killing sun, A sizzling candle in love with a moth, spouting angrily at the moth’s indecision between a stupid lonesome death hanging upside down on a ceiling and the blazing deathly embrace of the candle’s nakedness, A turning record, stuck in the same groove for an undefined time now the needle ground to diamond dust settling lazily into the shapeless melting plastic, The stage. Two bodies, twisting groaning agonizing squashing years into minutes and flesh into flesh as fingers tear through the fabric of time and the fabric of skin looking for the definition of infinity and for the definition of love, The journey.

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Dizzy... Miss You I have no words left not now, they will come... later. I have only memories left now of promises, of passion. You hear me calling, you hear the distress in my voice and you invade my mind steal my body you kiss a spring flower and the pollen covers my lips and while I wait for the rain you sing me to smile with your words, your passion. The day’s crawl turns to dance, the rain pours tasting like your morning’s yawn. You are beautiful. Still, I miss you.

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Drops Of Make-Up A drop of paint, red, on your lip. A bit of blue beneath your eye, a bit of black along your eyelash, some gold in your iris, sparks, a woman’s touches of color and heart. You advanced, a flower of flesh among the lianas of the human jungle reaching me waiting for me to unfold your petals one by one then your leaves one by one then allowing me to swing your stem with my breath left then right and to pull up the corners of your mouth with my teeth left then right... You enfolded me with your arms and wrapped me inside your skin and as I started to fall into the innocent’s sleep you dropped into me stains of red, and blue, and black, and gold... drops of make-up, of dreams.

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Is When I Know When your fist clamps around my finger like an alligator’s hungry jaws the moment before you desert your body into that world I will never be able to follow you into and the only knowledge I have is that clamp, When your fist crushes my finger and my bones turn powder inside the mush of my muscles the moment during that explosion stitching pieces of your skin to mine leaving me with the treasure of scars and the incomprehension of crush, When your fist falls away from my finger hitting the floor with a thud of dead flesh the moment after you lose your consciousness to the retreating demons dragging behind ribbons of your flesh a whole army of coyotes chasing the scent inside you unaware of that falling away, Is when I know that I love you.

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Blueberries you grabbed two handfuls of blueberries and squashed them in your fists letting the dark juice drip into my mouth some drops missing and hitting my chin. then you smeared the mushy pulp on my chest wiping your palms on my sticky hairs and with a content sigh laid your head down on the mess claiming to listen to the squirrel in my ribcage. “hey...” you lifted your head, your face sticky, ragged tri-dimensional stains hanging on to it like dripping stalactites from the roof of a cave your other cheek as rosy as a morning’s eastern nimbus. “i love you...” you picked a stray piece of fruit from my lip and licked your finger clean several times then shove it carefully inside my mouth your head back on my chest and within seconds you fell asleep.

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So Now so now that I have drowned and the river carries me far away above me the stars far away beneath me the pebbles all around me you, so now when clothing has dissipated and bareness of bodies lies within us and you above me tender and you underneath me tense between me you, so now owning the knowledge unable to write in my words that unique innocence I uncovered that unique hesitation I buried absorbing in me you, so now behold my palm’s uncurling clasp as fingers fall from stilling flesh and all which stays inside my grasp is nipple’s singe and lovelock’s mesh.

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Crumblets Feed me the morsels escaping your mouth, Chattering crumbs wearing traces of red Rolling down paths kissing meadows way south Smelling of lipstick and tasting of bread. Travel that road leading up to my lips, Show me your palms cupping half bitten seeds, Watch as my teeth take irreverent nips Crumping those fingertips seasoned with weeds. Look, there’s some fritters above your left breast Pull off your necklace and let me invade Pastures with shivering florescence blest Falling like spikes to my tongue’s sweeping blade. More to your belly, your navel abounds Droplets of ginger and strawberry flakes Lost in between tiny chocolate mounds Bubbling beneath grenadine flavored lakes. Smile, when I finally lie by your side Sated with syrupy dribbles of dew, Whispering, heavy with sleep and with pride, Thank you for crumbs, and for love, and for you.

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Extremes I saw sadness in those eyes, Immane. The sadness of the knowledge of bombs, The sadness of the knowledge of lost child, of lost love, lost yesterdays, coming tomorrow... I saw pride in those eyes, Immense. The pride of the knowledge of tenderness, The pride of the knowledge of having found warmth, of having found joy, having found trust, the reality of dreams... I saw happiness in those eyes, Immeasurable. The happiness of the knowledge of having found love. Mine. I love you.

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If I Was A Poet If I was a poet I would have written about your fingers, those long slivers of flesh tapering into nothingness on their long journey starting at your palms’ periphery and ending inside my flesh and its transient desires, their end of travel the blisters on my skin, Or I would have written about your eyes before and during and after the storm, those scraps of sky hiding their innocence behind thin crescents of rosy flesh, so many suns in them, so many mountains of salt their sunspots, Or maybe about your mouth, oh, your mouth, so generously allotting its smile wrinkles, abounding in the gift of lip and tongue and teeth the softness of lip and tongue and song the fire of lip and tongue and breath. But I am not. I am a miserable plagiarist, all I do is copy reality to paper, the reality of your fingers of your eyes of your mouth. The reality of you.

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Desolation A bed for one, a TV which wouldn’t work, a sun which wouldn’t rise over interwoven limbs and mouths and a golden neck chain caught in a strand of hair. A dark street far away in the past, last night, A small figure hurrying away from the dog barks from the bed for one from the TV which wouldn’t work, its shapely form twisted grotesquely feet facing one way eyes facing the other way, my way, tears trying to mark a return path as they keep rolling and rolling splashing like tiny white explosions of salt in her wake, all around me, my shoes my socks wet... when did this puddle form at my feet? I am back, past the dog into the bed for one waiting for the sun which wouldn’t rise over us and breathing, breathing, breathing the leftovers of her scent. “Hello?...” “Hello... I love you,” feeling ridiculous between the clicks as if you don’t know. “I love you too,” nothing ridiculous in your answer, just the essence of passion reduced to a few words. “I love you,” you repeat and the red round hole in the sky is sun again and the shapeless splotches in the grass - flowers again and even the thundering motors cutting the clouds suddenly doesn’t bother me anymore. Thunder?... what thunder?... I find myself thinking, wondering how the monster airplane could take to the air on those crystalline trills of your laughter.

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Stowaways The day starts with a sigh. Strange, I think, not recognizing it till I sigh again. Stranger still, some crumbs of bread are still under my tongue, after so many days of tooth brushing and mouth rinsing and sneezing and yawning they are still there reminding me of the hands which prepared them with so much love. I chew on them, slowly, roll them on my tongue waiting for that other tongue to invade me and steal all my mouth’s secrets and possessions leaving me once more with that unrecognized sigh and stowaway crumbs. I finally know what I wish me for a birthday present. Life. As sighs, as crumbs, as the tip of that inquisitive tongue. Hey, of course, and the whole body attached to that tip of tongue too.

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Phases A creaking bed, a screeching door, A squeaking brown and beaten floor, Two window hinges set in rust Beneath some ancient Roman dust, A wizened spider’s snoring rest And one, brand new, mosquito pest, A crystal clear bewitching sea, An early blossomed apple tree, One clearly hesitating dove Between some crumbs and lady love, A puppy’s bark, a falling star, Three purple freesias in a jar, A pair of lips to melt a stone, A pair of arms to break my bone, A mermaid’s body, eyes divine, A willow’s graceful supple spine, That smile to blind away the sun, That soft and sweet and only one You...

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X Else? when you see me and I am not there touch the pebble you come to step on the tail of the dog which just barked by the obliterated bus ticket in your hand I am there where else? remember the air I forgot to exhale I still choke on it refusing to let part that part of world which touched you under garments and underneath skin my delight what else? I am not an artist but merely a lover blessed with the knowledge of drawing tiny pulsating rainbows beneath eyelids and blooming freesias on thin fingertips true love how else?

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Garden The magnolia sheds its big, white-violet petals, same way I shed my years, a thick, velvety carpet covering the ground underneath it several inches thick. It will grow them back next year, beautiful, fragrant. My years will not. I push the grass mower into the thick of the layer hearing the shearing sound with... anger?... envy?... and again, and again. Then, as the engine rumbles dangerously close to my head, I lie on the scattered leftovers trying to find you there among the broken branches and the peeling lichens and the incessant drip of petals. Shhhhh... I hear your voice above the rotating blades and feel your hands gathering me into your lap making there place for my pains, my hunger, my scratched knees, my sobs. Sing... I beg, and while you wash my dirty cheeks you start singing a lullaby in that soft voice God used when he called the day from the night. How do I know? Else, how did my night turn to day as I fell asleep?

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A Mess... Maybe I almost wrote my first poem today, my first poem for today, my first poem ever for today today. Not word games word games like poetry... poetry likes word games, word games like poetry are bliss to those who understand them curse to others a waste of time to others than the others. Short circuits in my mind when I think of you and poems and words and word games and all which my fingertips create is a mess and flowers hide inside behind scents and visions and childhood memories. A puzzle all which I want said is said but wrong order and syntax and language the whole picture hiding in the parts visible and invisible scattered yet complete yet complex yet indecipherable to all but you. You don’t have to de or re or un cipher the cipher, all you have to do is... sing, yes, sing, and then you will know all about me and my poems and my word games and the indecipherable mess when you sing and listen to me listening. You will find there the only solution so simple so much like love. Love.

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Colorless I knew they were there splashing against my life’s windshield as I kept rushing onward, colorless, all I saw were exploding blotches breaking the sunlight in the deformity of their suicidal impertinence, or was it innocence, was I as transparent to them as they were to me insistent as they were to penetrate my protective enclosure asking for color and ready to give up their lives for the once chance in hell or heaven that I see? I saw you at the side of the road smelling the flowers, touching the earth, I stopped. You approached me as if it was the most natural of things and touched your finger to my finger putting it then next to your lips in the universal sign of silence then started singing words which could mean only flowers. Why did I decide to make one sweeping movement with my arm when you opened your eyes upon me? I don’t know, just did it. And a sudden flood of fluttering colors followed my arm’s movement... butterflies... where did all these butterflies come from? I did one more sweep with both my arms and additional hundreds of fluttering wings and trembling antennae followed the arc of my movement, I did it again, and again, turning into a human windmill and waves and waves and hordes and swarms of fluttering color started spreading outwards from me filling the street, the fields, the sky, I was sunk in a sea of color I did not know its existence and it kept pouring on and on while you kept singing and dancing and making love to me and millions of butterflies singing in color landed on my body tearing down my clothes, clinging to my skin, chilling my burning insides with the incessant flutter of color while you kept singing and dancing and making love to me, oh, such a wonderful horror story crushed by tons and tons of the most exquisite of living colors while you kept singing and dancing and making love to me. I closed the door behind me, careful so as not to crush even one wing, smug and content in that crawling envelope blanketing me and telling me of all the color I missed in my life before that one and single finger touch. Finger... I looked down to it, something was holding it down, another finger stuck to it an arm attached to the finger a shoulder attached to the arm leading upwards into a neck then a red piece of smiling fire and higher up a pair of blinking blossoming orchards... a woman... you? I closed my eyes, no need for eyes anymore to see, feel, hear, color invaded my life and all I need do now is simply... open my skin and let color seep through into my blind odorless tasteless colorless world.

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Birthing The sky’s belly hangs low above my head, pregnant, waiting for the delivering cut suffocating, impatient, do it, human!... I feel your hand sliding into mine, I look at you knowing the time has come, the moment ripe... I pick up the knife and slash, oh, that scream of inebriated, delighted agony as disemboweled clouds fall out of way and a cataract of tumbling sunsets and knotted rainbows and not yet exploded stars drench us and a liberated sky mother cuddles us to its lap together with its writhing, giggling, burning newborns allowing us to join in nectar’s suckle off ripening mornings and awakening comets and opening lilac. Is it real? you ask frightened, delighted. As real as a dream come true, I answer, forgetting the ripening mornings and awakening comets and opening lilac and turning my mouth avidly upon your breasts.

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Dreams, dreams, hanging on thin silver wires inside transparent crystal spheres tinkling with every breath as they gently knock against each other testing melodies and sparkles and resilience. mine a bluish shade, yours a rosy pallor, ours an exploding brilliance as the spheres deliquesce and coalesce and effloresce into tiny, fragile burgeons descending along cobweb-thin and eternity-long rain strings down to your mouth where they open iridescent petals and fly away into world’s wild gardens leaving behind that delicious crimson stain on your lips. dreams, now a savor to be collected with finger’s tip and lip’s tip and tongue’s tip, those mystical tools of worship pertaining only to those true of love and rich of heart and of flowers.

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Ha... Crazy You Say? pulling the river around my shoulders an endless, streaming scarf carrying carrion, pebbles, life, filling my pockets with clumps of air breathing leftovers of dead storms asking for shelter from rain, nailing visions to walls with nine inch long nails the nine pounds hammer squashing my fingertips... “you look a mess,” you laughed kicking out of way rivers and clumps of air and nails and making exotic love to my fingertips and flesh love to the rest of me.

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You Laugh You laugh, Trying in vain to pull up the tears back into their flesh containers, Gravitation wins, unfair, it always wins. You laugh, happily, Love at the other end of a wire having found you and you are happy to be found in your own modest, passionate way. Modest, passionate, you invented a new art. You laugh, Wondering if you ever laughed before, or loved before, or lived... Not even aware of the alliterative triumvirate soaking into your senses and into those fingertips playing with the buttons of your blouse.

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Another World I loved I was loved I was never loved like this. a touch unwilling to untouch, hesitation inexistent, asperity a word anger a legend acrimony a salad dressing. so rich your love, so poor my words.

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Love In The Morning The morning stretches lazy arms Then yawns beneath the sleeping fields Before it smiles and coyly yields From endless lands of sunrise farms           a sun’s sweet charms. Your body rolls into my arms I breathe my dew upon its fields Until it soughs and slowly yields Those sighs it groomed in lilac farms           with feline charms. The light invades your naked arms And seeds my touch inside your fields Your skin its fire gently yields Inviting me to satin farms           to reap your charms.

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Foes death... The end of all time. The ominous grime Of hordes swarming southwards like menacing slime, The bilious moves Of iron dressed hooves And stone studded shields above bleeding flesh grooves, The sharp ended hooks, The vacuous looks. Death, asleep inside the pennons dangling from the somber tents Dreams of drowning thousand mornings in the hues of bleeding scents As the vultures fight coyotes for the carrion behind And a sparrow mourns each sunrise world’s forsaken peace of mind. thunder... The ashes way back. A sky burning black... A colorful village across on the track, And others beyond With laughter in bond Then others and others of innocence fond... Unsated, the rage Unburdens its cage. Breaks the wheat beneath the bellies set with thunder’s neighing fret Howling earth turns viscid mire under waves of acrid sweat While beneath horizon’s garden fears a moon the budding night Knowing of the coming slaughter bound to stain its pallid light. falcon... A childess, afar. A smiling pale scar, Her falcon, her flower, her flute face the tar, Incredulous stares When warrior glares With powerful fingers turn hilts into flares And growls reave the earth With words bare of mirth. “Pray your death be swift and painless, lest your falcon be of God...” Roars a voice devoid of spirit, scant of rancor’s mocking prod Watching falcon’s take to heavens turning lizard’s flying mate And a burning hail descending in a tidal killing spate. flower... The raining coal dies. No fear in those eyes, And warriors mutter the strangest of cries As horses draw near And faces austere Begin to unravel from halberd to spear And bellows the voice Its omen of choice. “Pray your sleep before my saber, lest your flower scents of Ghost...” And from petal’s blinding whiteness rolls a blade of cutting frost, Sleet beneath unblinking eyelids joining fingers with unthought Metal splinters streaking earthwards like bedeviled chains unwrought. flute... The mist sinking low. And hands tend to bow, Unscathed the trot turns to gallop then flow, The army and might No hindrance in sight, And what can the childess still throw to the light When hearing that bold, Dispassionate, cold... “Pray your kin has fled of reason, lest your flute bespeaks of Ghoul...” Thin the wafting sounds of summer rising from the silk and tulle Rolls the crystal tinkling sweetly birthing moans away of hills Trunks of ages hundred eons melt beneath the seeping trills. music... A vision unreal... Black stallions keel, All bearers of arms yield the saddles and kneel, To rear and to fore The irons of war Dismembered to slivers like summer’s rain pour, The grim turning meek The roar turning weak... “Tell me childess pale of visage, maiden soft of breast and eye, What was this of strangest magic turning war-lords battle shy?” Turns the fright to trilling laughter, falcon, flower, flute and storm, “Fire... frost... was none and neither, music was it... tender... warm...”

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Shopping the blue in your words so not like the azure in your eyes, the spot of blood at the tip of your punctured finger so not like the richness of red flooding your heart’s chambers, the pale of your uncovered breast so not like the moon’s pallid beam trying to cover it in modesty. I leaf through the album of your colors like through a shopping catalogue at war with myself at what do I like most what do I want most what is it which I will finally purchase? I would so like to have it all... I could never pay for it all with the cheap value of my poetry and words... shhh... you calm my fears with your lullaby, you can have the blue and you can have the azure, and you can have the spot of blood and the richness of red and the pale and the pallid of my breast and of the moon and you can have the paper of the album and its covers and all of the colors you did not yet see and feel and still need discover... but... I try to protest... and... you break my barely started protest, you will pay me with your cheap poetry and words and your summers and your mornings and your unslept nights lying there without me in your arms and your bleeding knees praying there for my touch with the dreams you seeded in my chest, with the breath you finally exhaled into my lungs with... your love. and when will you allow me to say “I love you”? I ask. and what are you waiting for? you ask.

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Inner Space if I could reach through my inner space into yours to find there the flowers you secretly guard and the words you zealously gather and the kisses you groom for me I would have curled around your imaginary finger and gone to sleep to never wake up from your world but I do not want you to go to sleep and never wake up even in my world and fore to that I would have reached out and let my arm coil around your waist pulling you in next to me your clothes forgotten outside your skin washing against mine and only when our mouths weld into one fall asleep and care to tell me how would we breathe? the gills at the ends of our fingertips breathing each other’s skin will keep us alive you are a romantic am I? and I guide your fingertips to my skin and after ensuring they are solidly sunk in I let my fingertips sink into yours and finally our mouths weld together I could not say... see? as air was not the vehicle of love anymore between us but romance pure immaculate innocent romance mmmmm... you suspire and finally we fall asleep

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Morning Breath breathe your morning breath upon the gloss of my eyes watch the thin layer of whitish steam waiting for the tip of your finger to doodle on it the word... love ...hey, I have two eyes... and on the other the word... you lick away that tear suddenly rolling down and don’t drink it press it between the pages of your memories’ book and one day far away in the future when you open this page again watch carefully the still wobbling round blob... these are stars you see in there a whole universe of stars which you mothered breathe your morning breath upon the gloss of my eyes

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